Just as people were slamming the former President and his wife for taking huge sums off Wall Street and the likes for speeches they may have redeemed themselves with a massive donation slated to help jobs in Chicago.

The Huffington Post reported:

Obama made the announcement while presenting preliminary plans for his presidential library and center in Chicago’s Jackson Park neighborhood. Construction will take four years, but Obama said he wanted the facility to start offering programs immediately.

“We don’t want to wait for a building,” he said. “One of the things that we will be starting this year is Michelle and I personally are going to donate $2 million to our summer jobs programs here in the community, so that right away, young people can get to work and we can start providing opportunities to all of them.”

Obama, who has faced criticism for making paid speeches to Wall Street since leaving the White House, said one reason he wanted his presidential center to begin offering programs is to combat the perception that Chicago is a dangerous city besieged by gun violence.

“As somebody who has not been right here in Chicago over the last couple years, whenever I visit, I tell people, Chicago’s never looked more beautiful. It has, it has never sparkled more,” Obama said. “And yet, if you ask a lot of people outside of Chicago about Chicago, what’s the first thing they talk about? They talk about the violence.”

Read more in the Huff here.