James Stephen «Jimmy» Donaldson, better known as MrBeast on YouTube, has built an entire village in eastern Ghana for nearly $10 million. The new settlement features a school, housing for teachers, a clinic, a clean water supply and even its own solar power plant.
The project, named Abna Dakwa Village, took about a year to plan and another eight months to build. Designed to accommodate approximately 1,000 residents, the settlement was created for families in a region where children often work on cocoa plantations instead of attending school.
The village center includes a school that can serve more than 300 students and 10 homes for teachers. Other facilities include a medical clinic, a market, a library, a community center and sports grounds.
Special attention was paid to necessities. The village has water towers and a clean water supply system, solar power, and agricultural facilities, including fish ponds and a chicken coop. These additions aim to help residents reduce their reliance on farming while creating additional sources of food and income.
Schoolchildren are also guaranteed free lunches every school day for five years — a program supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The goal is to make it easier for children to attend school regularly rather than return to work on cocoa plantations.
Donaldson describes the project as his largest humanitarian initiative to date. He also used the project to draw attention to child labor in West Africa’s cocoa-growing regions.
The audience seems to like MrBeast’s new video format. In just two days, the video about the village garnered 48 million views, 1.4 million likes and nearly 70,000 comments on YouTube.
