Visy Industries chairman Anthony Pratt has pledged $1 million to the Australian bushfire fight on behalf of the Pratt Foundation, a Melbourne based philanthropic organisation that was formed in 1978.
The pledge, announced on Pratt’s LinkedIn account, has been committed to the not-for-profit organisation Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal and will be dispersed by this organisation.
It comes as a number of Australian corporate leaders, including James Packer, and celebrities Nicole Kidman, Pink and Aussie comedian Celeste Barber get onboard the fundraising effort for bushfire relief.
“The Pratt Foundation is honoured to pledge one million dollars to be dispersed through the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR), in support of the brave Australians battling the fires,” the announcement on Monday said.
The devastating bushfires have razed millions of hectares of land across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The death toll from the fires now sits at 24 with half a billion animals also killed in the devastation and hundreds of homes and livelihoods destroyed.
Pratt was named Australia’s Richest Man in 2019 by the Australia Financial Review newspaper.
In September 2019 Pratt officially opened a paper recycling mill in Wapakoneta, Ohio with US President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in attendance.
At the opening Pratt said the plant would not exist if it weren’t for the election of Trump, who pledged in the run up to the election to issue tax credits and reductions for companies looking to invest onshore in the US.
The Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal is a not-for-profit organisation that harnesses the power of collective investment between government, business and philanthropy to improve the lives of those living in rural, regional and remote Australia.
The organisation says it strongly believes that local people are best-placed to know what is going to work best in their communities, so we focus on helping communities address local opportunities and challenges, to deal with factors of distance and service access and to maintain and build community cohesion and strength.
The Pratt Foundation is an Australian philanthropic organisation based in Melbourne and established in 1978 by Jeanne and Richard Pratt. According to its Values Statement, it has “the shared vision of supporting charitable enterprises and adding value to philanthropy”.
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