# MrBeast Spent $10 Million Building a Village in Ghana. Barely Anyone Watched. > Jimmy Donaldson funded homes, a school and clean water for a new Ghanaian community aimed at keeping children out of illegal labor, but he admits his philanthropy content draws a fraction of the audience his entertainment videos do. - Source: VUUQUE - Canonical URL: https://vuuque.com/article/mrbeast-ghana-village-philanthropy - Author: VUUQUE Editorial - Section: Business & Work - Published: 2026-09-22T00:22:00.577Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T00:22:00.577Z - Tags: MrBeast, Philanthropy, Ghana, Beast Philanthropy --- MrBeast, the YouTuber known offscreen as Jimmy Donaldson, funded the construction of an entirely new village in Ghana called Abna Dakwa, an $10 million project that took eight months to build. The development includes homes, an educational facility, sanitation infrastructure, a marketplace, agricultural land and a water source, along with drainage improvements designed to prevent flooding in the surrounding area. ## Built around keeping kids in school The village's core purpose is preventive rather than purely charitable: by guaranteeing free school meals for five years, the project aims to give families a concrete incentive to keep children in education instead of illegal labor. It's part of a broader push by Beast Philanthropy, Donaldson's charitable arm, which has previously worked to eliminate child labor in Ghana, expand access to clean water for millions of people, distribute more than 48 million meals to food-insecure communities, and plant over 25 million trees. ## A generosity gap in the numbers Despite the scale of the project, Donaldson has been candid that his philanthropy content simply doesn't perform the way his entertainment videos do. Pushed on why that disparity exists, he brushed off suggestions that the motivation behind his giving is tied to views. His core audience skews young, concentrated among viewers aged 11 to 24, spanning middle school through early university, a demographic far younger than the typical American philanthropist, who is on average 64 years old. At 28, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion and a base in Greenville, North Carolina, Donaldson continues running large-scale giving projects even when they draw a smaller crowd than his usual content. --- Originally published by VUUQUE. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://vuuque.com/article/mrbeast-ghana-village-philanthropy.