In 2006, Brad Pitt created the Make It Right Foundation New Orleans and gathered a group of housing professionals together in the Hurricane Katrina-stricken city with the goal of financing and constructing 150 new houses in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. The houses are being designed with an emphasis on sustainability and affordability, with the hope that the project can and will be replicated throughout the city, with the assistance of Global Green USA, a national environmental organization. Thirteen architectural firms are involved in the project, many of which are donating their services. Pitt and philanthropist Steve Bing have each committed to matching $5 million in donations.

Now those homes are coming into view.  In early December 2008 Pitt visited the New Orleans neighborhood where families are moving into six homes built by his charity following Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s amazing,“ said the actor as he met the new homeowners. “This place that suffered such injustice and so much death can become one of the primary examples of a high-performance neighborhood. It really is amazing.”

Through Make It Right, the actor has helped to fund the construction of six new houses, with more to come.

“You’re going to see 100 homes here, mark my words,“ he said. “It’s nice to see a few, but I’m anxious to see 100, 150, 1,000. I’m really happy for the families that are going to be here, but I can’t help but think about the families that aren’t. It’s a push-pull for me. The excitement is that it’s being proven, that it’s working. The frustration is that we have a long way to go.“

One of the residents, 71-year-old Inez Converse, told the BBC that she is pleased to have returned to the neighborhood where she lived for 35 years, and thanked Pitt in person.

“He didn’t have to do this. I’m just grateful that he is,” she said.

This isn’t his first charitable act. In past years he has done other charity work, not just here in America but around the world. He has also been highly involved in politics.

In 2004, Pitt visited the University of Missouri campus to encourage students to vote in the 2004 US presidential election, in which he supported John Kerry. Also in 2004, he publicly spoke for funding tax-free embryonic stem-cell research. Saying, “We have to make sure that we open up these avenues so that our best and our brightest can go find these cures that they believe they will find.” He also supported California’s ballot initiative, Proposition 71, where federal government provide funding for research that use different types of stem cells, including adult and embryonic stem cells.

Pitt, along with co-stars George Clooney and Matt Damon, supports One, a campaign fighting AIDS and poverty in Third World countries. He is the narrator of the public television series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge, which discusses current important global health issues. In 2005, Pitt and Angelina Jolie visited Pakistan in November to see the impact of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. The following year, Pitt and Jolie flew to Haiti and visited a school supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean. In May 2007, Pitt and Jolie subsequently donated $1 million to three relief organizations in Chad and Darfur, affected by the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region. He is behind Not On Our Watch, an organization that focuses global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities such as in Darfur, along with Clooney, Damon, Don Cheadle, and Jerry Weintraub.

In September 2008, Pitt donated $100,000 to fight California’s November 2008 ballot, Proposition 8, initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. He stated, “Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.