MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, said he spent $10 million building a village in Ghana called Abna Dakwa.
The project includes houses, a school, toilet facilities, a marketplace, a community farm, a well, and drainage changes meant to stop flooding around the existing settlement, according to the post and video description tied to the project.
Donaldson said the work took eight months to complete. He also said the goal is to keep families and children out of illegal labor.
On X, Donaldson said the video probably would not perform as well as his lighter content. 'It prob won’t perform that well, but it’s something I care a lot about and I hope my passion for it shines through,' he wrote.
When a follower said his humanitarian videos tend to get fewer views, Donaldson replied: 'It’s funny when people say I only help people for views because it’s literally the opposite lol. Doesn’t matter though, helping people brings me purpose, and even if no one watches, I’ll keep making them.'
Donaldson is 28. Fortune said he is reportedly worth $2.6 billion, and that his audience skews heavily toward ages 11 to 24, with the strongest concentration among middle schoolers through younger university students. By contrast, the average philanthropist in the U.S. is 64 years old, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.
The project also includes free school meals for pupils at the new school for five years, with the team hoping that would encourage children and families to stay in education rather than begin illegal work.
The latest effort is part of Beast Philanthropy, Donaldson’s nonprofit, which aims to eradicate child labor in Ghana. Other targets include bringing clean water to millions of people, delivering more than 48 million meals to those who are food insecure, and planting more than 25 million trees.
Donaldson also said on X that his work in Greenville, North Carolina, where he grew up and now has his operational headquarters, would not fit into a single tweet.
The numbers come first. A creator worth billions can fund a village, but the real test is whether charity survives the algorithm. Capital rewards scale, and philanthropy today must compete with entertainment for attention.
That is the market at work even in giving. Donaldson says he will keep going if nobody watches. In an age when public institutions often promise more than they deliver, private capital is still doing the heavy lifting where governments and bureaucracy leave the gap.
