American novelist and philanthropist best known as the former wife of Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott gifted nearly $85 million to the Girl Scouts of the USA and some of its local branches in an effort to help advance the 110-year-old organization's mission.

Scott’s donation to VisionSpring is believed to be the largest single private donation towards helping solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision which leaves hundreds of millions of people in poverty.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the 500 wealthiest people in the world, estimates Scott's net worth at $27.6 billion, making her the 41st-richest person in the world. After she split from Bezos in 2019, she pledged to give about half of her more than $35 billion fortune away to charities, per NBC News.

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Scott's gift will go to Girl Scouts of the USA and 29 local councils that Scott selected, the organization said in a news release.

The money will go toward creating “more equitable membership opportunities” in underserved areas; expanding programming in career readiness and mental health and exploring STEM fields; bolstering research, staff and volunteer training; and upgrading Girl Scout facilities to be more accessible and resilient to climate change, among other things, it said.

According to the Guardian, The donation – announced on World Sight Day – kickstarts an initiative to provide glasses to hundreds of thousands of low-income tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers in India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.

VisionSpring says its $70m Livelihoods in Focus campaign could create more than $1bn of new income among tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers by 2030 by allowing them to see clearer and earn more.

“The gift from Ms Scott is an incredible acknowledgment of the power of a simple pair of eyeglasses to unlock earning, learning, safety and wellbeing for people vulnerable to poverty,” VisionSpring’s chief executive Ella Gudwin said.

“And, with this powerful endorsement of our work, we are embarking on a multi-year journey to put Livelihoods in Focus, addressing the massive vision care gap among agricultural and artisan workers in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. We need many more philanthropic investors, along with governments, companies and NGOs to join in bringing the wonder of clear vision to everyone.”

The non-profit organisation said it found that 65-85% of workers who acquired eyeglasses through its vision access programmes had never had their sight tested before and became first-time wearers of glasses.

“For workers the benefits of this-700 year-old technology are immediate,” VisionSpring said. “They gain improved productivity, income and wellbeing the moment glasses move from case to face. Research also shows that eyeglasses improve quality of life, reducing depression and anxiety, and increasing involvement in religious and family life.”

Sofia Chang, the Girl Scouts' first Asian American CEO, said Scott's gift is “a great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to help girls cultivate the skills and connections needed to lead in their own communities and globally.”

Founded in 1912, the Girl Scouts host troops, service projects, camps and other events to cultivate leadership and other skills — including coding, robotics, financial literacy and computer science — for about 2.5 million members, including transgender girls, according to its website.

Scott collected $38bn (£27.5bn) in her divorce from Bezos in 2019 – the world’s biggest divorce settlement – and rapidly started giving it away.

Soon after the divorce, she said she had “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and promised to work hard at giving it away “until the safe is empty”. She has already donated more than $12bn to good causes.

Scott made the declaration in a letter to the Giving Pledge, the philanthropic initiative created by the investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft’s principal founder, Bill Gates, to encourage the world’s richest people to commit to giving away at least half their wealth to charity.

Scott, who married Jeff Bezos in 1993, a year before he started Amazon from his garage in Seattle, said: “There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others – time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humour [and] compassion.

“In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”

Her ex-husband, the world’s second-richest person with a$136bn personal fortune, has not signed up to the Giving Pledge.

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Sources: The Guardian,NBC News, Fox Business