Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian Attend TIAH Fundraiser
This Is About Humanity services vulnerable communities at the Tijuana and U.S. border and raised more than $1 million on Saturday in Los Angeles.
“All the money that will be raised by you raising your paddles will be matched by the Bezos family tonight, on top of everything they have given already — I'd like to be adopted,” said Henry Winkler to laughs on Saturday in Brentwood.
The actor opened his home to host
This Is About Humanity's fifth anniversary fundraiser, which collected more than $1 million this past weekend. That's on top of the $1 million the Bezos family donated in 2022.
The organization, servicing vulnerable communities at the Tijuana and U.S. border since 2018, was started by Winkler's daughter Zoe Winkler Reinis with Yolanda Walther-Meade and Elsa Marie Collins. The women work to help shelters for minors, women, families and the LGBTQ community in the area.
“We went from wanting to do things to actually doing them,” Collins said of Lauren Sánchez's impact — the evening's honoree and recipient of its Humanitarian Award. She was joined by fiancé Jeff Bezos and friends including Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Eva Longoria and Hussein bin Abdullah, crown prince of Jordan.
Jenner and producer Brian Grazer kicked off the night with a donation of $50,000 each.
“We used to be part of a women's group that…,” Collins said of how she and
Sánchez met.
“…wanted to make a difference in politics,” Sánchez jumped in. “We're also great pickleball partners. We destroy everyone on the court.” “Our Latina side comes out.” Sánchez was seeing Collins post about TIAH during the COVID-19 lockdown, she explained. “I called her up and said, ‘How do I help you?'
“I came back a different person,” she went on, of her first time visiting the border.
Getting teary-eyed, after a pause, she continued, “These — I get emotional every time I talk about it — this little girl, like three years old, and they're in this space this big," she gestured, "with a hundred other people living in a tent. And these kids are happy. They have these smiles on their faces. They're full of life. But they just want someone to see them.”
When Sánchez took the stage, she shared her struggles with grades as a kid due to undiagnosed dyslexia and being “seen” by a teacher. “It took just one person who believed in me.”
In the end, she added, “And Jeff, I just want to say, thank you for inspiring me to go out into the world and make a difference.”
Eyes turned to Bezos, who was at a table with Jenner and her boyfriend
Corey Gamble.
“You did so good,” Jenner told Sánchez when she joined them. “You did a beautiful job, baby.”
Sánchez has helped TIAH open the Ludotecas/Learning Libraries for kids, a collaboration with the International Community Foundation and United Way Mexico. Working with 19 shelters, TIAH has also increased meals at their foodrelief kitchen with ICF and Fundacion Tijuana Sin Hambre — from serving 1,000 a day to 3,100 while on track to serve more than a million by the end of the year. They've hired a full-time psychologist for the LGBTQ shelters and supported Immigrant Defenders
Law Center's efforts in pro bono legal representation.
“If they were not in these shelters they would be vulnerable to human trafficking, sex trafficking, abduction from narco cartels, narco violence,” Collins said. And there's a need to continue "establishing programs and spaces where we know people are going to be coming through and that these places are safe, and they're taken care of, and they're treated with humanity."