New Delhi: The former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the wealthiest woman in the world, MacKenzie Scott is on a donation spree and has announced that she has donated around $4.2 billion in the past four months to hundreds of organizations as the pandemic hits lives like ‘a wrecking ball.’ Her donations were a part of a ‘giving pledge’ she signed last year when she decided to donate a bulk of her wealth to charity.

Earlier this year, Scott, who formerly went by the name MacKenzie Bezos, also gifted nearly $1.7 billion to groups devoted to race, gender and economic equality, as well as other social causes.

According to an AFP report, in a post detailing about her donations this year, Scott said, “This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling. Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty.”

She also noted that the wealth of billionaires has substantially increased almost 80 percent during the pandemic.

Scott further said that she has enlisted a team of advisors that helped her identify 384 organizations across the US that support the vulnerable suffering from the economic toll of the pandemic.

Special attention was given to organizations working to combat hunger, poverty and racial inequity in communities, added Scott.

Targets for support included food banks, employment training services, legal defense funds, debt relief programs and civil rights advocacy groups.

Scott said, “The groups that received donations have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day.”

Scott, who had always lived in the shadow of Bezos while they were married, said that she was “far from completing” her giving pledge, and urged others to follow her lead in whatever way they could: time, a voice or money.

After her divorce with husband Bezos, she became a multi-billionaire and got added to the world’s richest list as the Amazon founder gave 4 per cent of the online retailer to her during their divorce. She recently ranked 20th on a Forbes real-time list of the world’s richest people index, with a net worth of $56 billion — after taking her latest donations into account.

The richest to top the list was Jeff Bezos with a net worth of $185 billion.