Angelina Jolie Voight, a mother to six children and a natural beauty both inside and out, she needs no introduction as humanitarian spokes person to the world. Jolie was born on June 4, 1975. She is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has been cited as the world's "most beautiful" woman, a title for which she has received substantial media attention.
Since 2001, Jolie has been on field missions around the world and met with refugees and internally displaced persons in more than 20 countries, including Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Cambodia, Pakistan, Thailand, Ecuador, Kosovo, Kenya, Namibia, Sri Lanka, North Caucasus, Jordan, Egypt, New Delhi, Costa Rica, Chad, Syria, and Iraq, to name a few, and most recently visited earthquake victims in Haiti on her latest trip to help survivors of conflict and natural disaster.
In 2001 Jolie was recognized and named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, to help educate the public not only about the plight of refugees, but also about the perseverance and courage they show in overcoming all odds to rebuild their lives.
In 2003, Jolie was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Award given out by the United Nations Correspondents Association to those who have made a significant contribution. It was initiated in 2003, in honor of Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was killed in the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq. In 2005, Jolie was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the United Nations Association of the USA for her work with UNHCR and with refugees. That same year, Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country.
Jolie also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which helps fund education programs for children affected by conflict. Founded in 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative, annual meetings have brought together more than 100 current and former heads of state, 14 Nobel Peace Prize winners, hundreds of leading global CEOs, major philanthropists and foundation heads, directors of the most effective non-governmental organizations, and prominent members of the media. In 2007, 19 organizations made a commitment worth $148 million to educate 350,000 of the children out-of-school in conflict areas and help improve the quality of schooling for nearly 700,000 additional children.
According to tax records, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt donated more than $8 million to charity in 2006 alone.
In January, 2008, Jolie and her brother, James Haven, marked the first anniversary of their mother’s death from ovarian cancer by making an undisclosed donation to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
In June 2009, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, dedicated to eradicating extreme rural poverty, protecting natural resources and conserving wildlife, donated to a U.N. refugee agency to help Pakistanis displaced by fighting between troops and Taliban militants. In January 2010, the foundation donated to Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971, providing aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters, for emergency medical assistance to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Jolie has been travelling to refugee camps around the world since filming Tomb Raider. During her missions she has visited places including Sudan’s war-torn Darfur, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Tanzania. She also visited Afghan refugees in Pakistan and donated $1 million to help.
Jolie published Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001-2002) with proceeds benefiting UNHCR.
