Jill Scott - Charity Work and Advocacy

Charity Work and Advocacy

Scott has established the Blues Babe Foundation, a program founded to help young minority students pay for university expenses. The Blues Babe Foundation offers financial assistance to students between the ages of sixteen to twenty-one, and targets students residing in Philadelphia, Camden, and the greater Delaware Valley. Scott donated USD$100,000 to help start the foundation. The foundation was named after Scott's grandmother, known as "Blue Babe". On the foundation's website, it defines its mission statement as one where it "seeks to provide financial support and mentoring for those students who have shown the aptitude and commitment to their education, but whose families may not have the resources to ensure completion of their undergraduate degrees".

In Spring 2003, the Blues Babe Foundation made a donation of more than $60,000 to the graduating class of the Creative Arts School in Camden, New Jersey. Any student, who maintained a 3.2 GPA received a yearly stipend for the next three years, that was put toward his or her college education.

At the Essence Music Festival in July 2006, Scott spoke out about how women of color are portrayed in the lyrics of rap songs, and in rap music videos. Scott criticized the content for being "dirty, inappropriate, inadequate, unhealthy, and polluted" and urged the listening audience to "demand more".

Scott was a columnist in the April issue of Essence magazine and she expressed her point of view about Black men, who marry Caucasian women. In the column Scott says: "We reflect on this awful past and recall that if a Black man even looked at a White woman, he would have been lynched, beaten, jailed or shot to death. These harsh truths lead to what we really feel when we see a seemingly together brother with a Caucasian woman and their children. That feeling is betrayed." The column has sparked controversy on the internet.