In its first year of operation, the Amy Winehouse Foundation has donated £232,000 to disadvantaged youth.
Metro reports that the foundation set up by Amy’s father Mitch following her untimely death has already done much to help disadvantaged young people.
They announced, on what would’ve been Amy’s 29th birthday, that they have given £232,000 to a wide array of charities that help young people, including New Horizon Youth Centre, Fitzrovia Youth In Action, the MS Society, The Pilion Trust – Crash Pad Shelter, London Irish Centre, Little Havens Hospice and Chestnut Tree House Hospice and Hopes & Dreams.
The Foundation has also established a full scholarship in her name at Sylvia Young Theatre School, which Amy attended as a teenager.
Mitch Winehouse said the Foundation was set up to “provide help, support or care for young people, especially those who are in need by reason of ill health, disability, financial disadvantage or addiction”.
The Winehouse family posted on the Foundation’s site:
“Whilst we have, in the last twelve months, been able to establish our Foundation in memory of her, and make huge strides and changes in the lives of people we have been able to support, we would of course have wished that none of this would have happened, and that we’d today be celebrating this day by calling her up, having a chat, going round and seeing, having a cup of tea made by, and, in all probability, having a bit of an argument with Amy. Make no mistake, though, that she continues to be our first thought when waking up, and our last when laying our heads down for sleep.”
The funds were raised through various avenues, including eBay auctions, benefit concerts, charity dinners and sales of Mitch’s memoir Amy: My Daughter.