Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson give $13.5m to help Maui wildfire victims
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Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson said they created the People’s Fund of Maui under the guidance of community residents and leaders.
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MAUI – American celebrities Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson have donated US$10 million (S$13.5 million) to help establish a fund that will give direct cash assistance to Maui residents displaced by catastrophic wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes on the island, they said on Thursday.
The People’s Fund of Maui is offering payments of US$1,200 a month to adults whose homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable by the wildfires in Lahaina and Kula
The assistance is available to home owners and renters, but not to property owners who do not live in the homes they own.
The fund aims to “put money directly in the hands of those individuals most affected”, Johnson said in a statement.
The actor and former wrestler known as The Rock is partly of Polynesian descent and grew up for a time in Hawaii.
“People being able to have their own agency, being able to make decisions for themselves about what they need and what their family needs – that’s our goal,” Winfrey added in a video on Instagram. She promised that the public’s donations to the fund would go directly to victims.
The fund is the latest non-governmental effort to help survivors of the wildfires. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency offered survivors an immediate payment of US$700 for critical needs such as food and water, among other forms of aid, West Maui residents have said more help is needed faster, and that ad hoc networks of volunteers were doing more than federal and local agencies.
Many native Hawaiians and other long-time residents have said that they fear they may not be able to afford to rebuild their lives on an island that already had a housing shortage before the wildfires burned down more than 2,000 structures and forced thousands of people into emergency shelters.
Some workers who keep Maui’s booming tourism industry running have also been priced out by wealthy buyers from the mainland, including billionaires such as Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and Winfrey. She has lived in Maui part-time for more than 15 years.
Winfrey and Johnson said they created the People’s Fund of Maui under the guidance of community residents and leaders, including prominent singer Keali’i Reichel, who was born in Lahaina, and Hokulani Holt, a community leader and hula teacher. NYTIMES
