Obama donates Nobel Prize money to charity

WASHINGTON, March 11 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday announced which charities will receive a portion of the $1.4 million award he received as a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The president said he would donate $250,000 to Fisher House, a non-profit that helps provide housing for families of patients receiving medical care at major military and VA medical centers, and $200,000 to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, which is helping raise funds for long-term relief efforts in Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake.

He is donating $125,000 each to a variety of college scholarship funds -- College Summit, the Posse Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, and the American Indian College Fund.

Obama is donating $100,000 to the Central Asia Institute.

"These organizations do extraordinary work in the United States and abroad helping students, veterans and countless others in need," the president said in a statement released by the White House. "I'm proud to support their work."

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for what the Nobel Committee called his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy."