founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez have given away $100 million to a retired Navy admiral and actress Eva Longoria as part of the billionaire’s annual prize to individuals who make significant contributions to society.

The Desperate Housewives star and Bill McRaven, a veteran and former chancellor of the University of Texas System have been awarded $50 million each to help those in need.

Bezos – who has a net worth of around $200 billion – launched the Courage and Civility Award in 2021 to support philanthropists.

Van Jones, a lawyer and CNN commentator, and the lauded chef and humanitarian José Andrés were the first recipients of the prize.

“We need unifiers and not vilifiers,” Bezos commented on the reason for launching the award, before revealing the inaugural prize winners.

“People who argue hard and act hard for what they truly believe, but always with civility and never ad hominem attacks. And unfortunately, we live in a world where this is too often not the case.”

Since then, country singing icon Dolly Parton took home the 2022 award, after donating $1 million toward Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine research and books to millions of children through her foundation Imagination Library.

Twelve years on from embodying Wisteria Lane’s housewife Gabrielle Solis, Longoria has gone on to become a director, the CEO of her own production company, UnbeliEVAble Entertainment and a political activist.

In 2021, she founded The Eva Longoria Foundation “to help Latinas build better futures for themselves and their families through education and entrepreneurship,” according to its website.

The charitable body achieves that through a variety of programs for aspirational Latinx, including mentorship and access to funding.

With her portion of the award money, Longoria told Elle that she plans to “continue doing what I’ve been doing” with the Eva Longoria Foundation and Eva’s Heroes, a charitable organization within the foundation that supports the special needs community.

Longoria said that her charitable focus is on women because they “are the changemakers in families.”

“When you help a woman, she helps her family. And then when you help families, you improve communities. And when you improve communities, you can improve nations,” she added.

Meanwhile, McRaven – who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden – has pledged to use the money to develop education programs for future military leaders and the children of deceased veterans, as well as mental health support for those who serve. (Yahoo!)