Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively Made a Huge Donation to an Indigenous Women Leadership Initiative
Canada's National Indigenous History Month is coming to a close, but not before Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are making sure that indigenous voices — and female indigenous voices, specifically — get a little extra help. According to Entertainment Tonight Canada, the couple made a $200,000 donation to St. Francis Xavier University's Coady Institute's new initiative, the Circle of Abundance, which works to promote women's voices and leadership. The donation will undoubtedly help with the organization's goal of raising $1 million to support its International Centre for Women's Leadership.
"We're so happy to support the incredible work of the Coady Institute's program with Indigenous Women," Lively and Reynolds said in a joint statement. "We're blown away by the conversations we've had and the work they do and look forward to joining them on this journey."
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Coady Indigenous Program lead and graduate Karri-Lynn Paul explained all the work that the organization is doing, saying, "These indigenous leaders are inspiring renewed energy on how to move forward with our work. Their insights and grounding of our work in the realities of grassroots indigenous women’s lives is an important piece in our journey. They also talked about how we are enough, and how we need to prioritize programs that are created by indigenous women for indigenous women. This funding offers the opportunity to make that happen."
The $200,000 is just the latest donation from Reynolds and Lively. On May 31, Reynolds announced that the two would be making a $200,000 donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund as the country rallied around Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd. Before that, the two donated $1 million to Feeding America and Food Banks Canada, helping the organizations provide meals for those facing food scarcity during the coronavirus pandemic.
