Michael Eisner Creates $100k Annual Prize

Michael Eisner is giving back in a big way this year. 

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The former Walt Disney CEO's Eisner Foundation has announced the establishment of the annual Eisner Prize for Intergenerational Excellence, which will award the recipient with $100,000 in cash for the person or non-profit organization that best brings senior citizens and young people together in the spirit of helping one another, reports the Associated Press. 

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And, the foundation has already announced the prize's first winner: the Intergenerational Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, which has set up community programs in the city of brotherly love, as well as in Minnesota and Southern California. 

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Eisner's charitable organization, which was established by the one-time Disney head and his family 15 years ago, allocates about $7.5 million each year and has assets of $135 million. It was originally intended to help in-need children in Los Angeles County, but its focus has changed to aging baby boomers over the years.

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"The bubble growing in seniors in this country, the kind of siloing of them, ghettoizing of them, the lack of financial support from all sectors, including the government, makes this issue almost a crisis issue," Eisner told the AP. 

"It's a question of what do we want to do as a society," Eisner said. "Do we want to warehouse older Americans and wait for them to become a burden or do we want to use them as a resource to inspire and educate younger people?"