TikTok made a huge announcement yesterday. The short-form video app is pledging $250 million for COVID-19 relief efforts. Notably, they are committing to support a variety of impacted communities. These communities include front line medical workers, educators, and local communities who are being affected by the global crisis. From TikTok President, Alex Zhu:
The TikTok community is uplifting one another, caring for one another, and lending a hand to one another. This may be a serious time, but on TikTok it can still be joyful – and deeply inspiring. We are committed to playing our part in that global outpouring of mutual support and giving. We want to magnify all we are seeing across our community and translate it into concrete relief for those most affected by this crisis.
Breakdown of The Relief
In short, the $250 million set for relief is for a variety of charities, while zeroing in on 3 specifically. This is including $150 million for the TikTok Health Heroes Relief Fund. Important to note, this fund supports medical staffing, supplies, and hardship relief for health care workers. These distributions will be focusing on local organizations to support local health workers. In addition to this, they are partnering with the CDC Foundation in donating $15m toward supporting surge staffing.
The next fund is the TikTok Community Relief Fund. TikTok will allot $40m in cash to local organizations that serve groups representative of TikTok’s diverse user communities. Furthermore, this is including musicians, artists, nurses, educators, and families. They will also be matching $10m in donations from the TikTok community to support the TikTok community.
The final fund is the TikTok Creative Learning Fund. This fund will be providing $50m in grants to educators, professional experts, and nonprofits whose real-world skills and expertise can help spread educational information and useful course material in an accessible, distance learning format.
To learn more about the initiatives, visit the TikTok news blog here.