Ford Foundation Announces Winners of Leadership Awards
20 Recognized for Outstanding Leadership in U.S. Communities
New York, N.Y., September 21, 2001 – The Ford Foundation today announced the first winners of its Leadership for a Changing World (L.C.W.) awards program. The 20 awardees, selected from 36 finalists in a pool of more than 3,000 nominations, represent individuals and leadership teams that are getting results tackling tough social problems in communities across the United States. Each will receive $100,000 to advance their work and an additional $30,000 to strengthen their skills and for other supporting activities over the next two years. Leadership for a Changing World, launched in September 2000, is a program of the Ford Foundation in partnership with the Washington-based Advocacy Institute and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. It will recognize another 20 awardees in each of the next two years, for a total of 60. The program has four goals: to recognize the achievements of outstanding leaders who are not well-known outside their immediate communities or fields, to provide financial and other support for their work, to conduct research that will explore how leadership is perceived, created and sustained, and to encourage a public conversation about community leadership.
L.C.W. awardees demonstrate a kind of leadership that is particularly effective in addressing the complex social realities of contemporary communities. They include people who have skillfully built consensus and overcome divisive issues, mobilizing diverse groups, from grass roots to government, that address a range of social problems. Many have gotten results by bridging divisions of race, ethnicity, ideology, class and economic disparity.
Working in teams as well as individually, this year's awardees direct efforts that include community initiatives to combat environmental pollution and address its health affects; securing long-term care and housing for people with H.I.V./AIDS as well as raising awareness about prevention; and promoting environmentally sound economic development in depressed communities. Among the awardees are immigrants who have organized broad coalitions to secure better working and living conditions for fellow immigrants and other low-income workers, Native Americans that have helped their tribes break through isolation and poverty to renew cultural traditions and tackle social and economic problems, and the founder of a multiethnic theater company that helps communities use theater to encourage discussions of tough local issues. Other awardees are helping female inmates improve their lives in prison, pioneering a holistic approach to the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts, and helping welfare recipients press for access to social services and job opportunities while also having a voice in policies that affect them. A list and brief description of the awardees is attached. To be eligible for a Leadership for a Changing World award, candidates must be nominated by someone familiar with their work who can attest to their qualifications. Nominations are reviewed by a team of readers. Subsequent levels of review include regional selection committees and site visits to the recommended finalists. A national committee, the Advocacy Institute and the Ford Foundation select the 20 awardees.
This year's National Selection Committee was co-chaired by Emmett E. Carson, president and C.E.O. of the Minneapolis Foundation and Dorothy Stoneman, president of YouthBuild USA. Members included: Diana Autin, executive director of Statewide Parent Advocacy Network of New Jersey; Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the A.F.L. - CIO; David Dodson, president of MDC, Inc.; Peter Edelman, professor at Georgetown University Law School; Don Fraser, former mayor of Minneapolis; Cynthia M. LeBlanc, deputy superintendent of Hayward Unified School District; Xuan Nguyen-Sutter, executive director of the Refugee Women's Network, Inc.; Donna Russell Red Wing, “outgiving” project director at the Gill Foundation; and Makani Themba-Nixon, consultant.
As part of a two-year program, awardees will meet several times annually with their co-winners and participate in a research project, led by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, that is exploring how community leadership is developed and sustained.
The Advocacy Institute is accepting nominations for the next round of awards. For more information, visit the program's web site at www.leadershipforchange.org or call (202) 777-7575. Information about the program can also be found on the Ford Foundation's Web site at www.fordfound.org The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation, and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia. www.fordfound.org The Advocacy Institute, founded in 1985, works to make a difference around the world by strengthening movements for political, social and economic justice through leadership support, networking and development. With its partners, it helps make democratic institutions accountable. The institute's actions link it to a global community of grass-roots activists and nongovernmental organizations that tackle critical human rights issues such as gender equity, peace, sustainable development, public health, ending poverty and protecting the environment. www.advocacy.org The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, established in 1938, offers advanced programs leading to the professional degrees of Master of Public Administration, Master of Urban Planning, Master of Science in Management, and Doctor of Philosophy. Through these programs, the Wagner School educates the future leaders of public, nonprofit and health institutions as well as private organizations serving the public sector. As the largest school of public service in the country, it is committed to preparing people who can translate ideas into action. www.nyu.edu/wagner
LEADERSHIP FOR A CHANGING WORLD AWARDEE DESCRIPTIONS
Denise Altvater, Program Director
Wabanaki Youth Program of the American Friends Service Committee, Perry, ME
Denise Altvater is helping members of the Wabanaki Confederacy—made up of four northeast New England tribes—to break through the isolation and poverty of rural Maine. She works mainly with tribal youth, emphasizing a renewal of cultural traditions, boosting their social and job skills and helping them to deal with discrimination, domestic abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction. Altvater is also working to ease tensions with surrounding communities through exchanges with local schools and law enforcement officials, and she assisted with the training of more than 500 representatives of the Maine Department of Human Services to encourage compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.
Denise Altvater
Program Director
AFSC Wabanaki Youth Program
P.O. Box 406
Perry, ME 04667
Phone: (207) 853-2317, E-mail:
wabanaki@ptc-me.net
Dale Asis, Executive Director
Coalition of African, Asian, European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois, Chicago, IL
Dale Asis has forged a coalition of 17 immigrant and refugee agencies to promote the rights of immigrants in the Chicago area and to help those seeking U.S. citizenship. The coalition offers citizenship instruction to 2,000 newcomers a year and is also training immigrants to use computer and Internet technology. By enlisting community leaders to document and report questionable practices by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and by sponsoring petition drives, the coalition won the creation of an independent review body to oversee I.N.S. practices in the Chicago area.
Dale Asis
Executive Director
Coalition of African, Asian, European and Latino
Immigrants of Illinois
1016 W. Argyle
Chicago, IL 60640
Phone: (773) 784-2900, Fax: (773) 784-2984, E-mail: daleasis@hotmail.com
Web: www.caaelii.org
Gail Aska, Paul Getsos, LaDon James, Jackie Marte, Joan Minieri, Diane Reese, Tyletha Samuels, Community Voices Heard, New York, NY
This team has helped welfare recipients become a powerful voice in New York City. Through C.V.H.'s education and advocacy training, thousands now gain access to social services they were formerly unable to access and know they have the right to be treated with dignity. C.V.H. has helped secure a New York City Transitional Jobs Program, which is designed to provide jobs and training to 7,500 welfare recipients over three years, as well as a state commitment to spend $60 million on jobs creation.
Community Voices Heard
170 East 116th St. Suite 1E
New York, NY 10029
Phone: (212) 860-6001, Fax: (212) 996-9481, E-mail: gail@CVHaction.org
Dianne Bady, Director; Janet Fout, Project Coordinator; and Laura Forman, Organizer
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Huntington, WV Bady, Fout and Forman are now well-known to the political and industrial leaders of the Ohio River Valley. Since forming OVEC a decade ago, they have proved a formidable force in fighting for sustainable and environmentally sound economic development in the region. Through community activism and strategic use of the media, the trio has led a successful effort to fight off new polluting businesses, including a paper mill and a toxic waste incinerator. OVEC is also pursuing its longstanding battle against mountaintop removal, which continues to threaten the state's environmental future. At the same time, Bady, Fout and Forman have publicized information about special-interest donations to state politicians and urged reform in campaign finance laws.
Dianne Bady, Director; Laura Forman, Organizer; Janet Fout, Project Coordinator
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
P.O. Box 6753
Huntington, WV 25773
Phone: (304) 522-0246, Fax: (304) 525-6984, E-mail: ohvec@ohvec.org
Web: www.ohvec.org
Rufino Domínguez, General Coordinator
Oaxaca Binational Indigenous Coalition (FIOB), Fresno, CA Rufino Domínguez seeks to promote California farmworkers' rights while also preserving the culture of migrant workers from Mexico's impoverished southern region of Oaxaca. He has built an organization that now includes more than 15 local committees reaching out to 80,000 indigenous Oaxacans living in the United States. Domínguez has also mobilized grass-roots support for greater governmental responsiveness to the rights and needs of immigrants who are not Spanish-speaking. For example, he helped establish a program that has provided professional training for 15 community interpreters in Mexican indigenous languages, an effort that has been replicated nationwide. Most recently he won funding for affordable housing for 36 Oaxacan families and for a new community center that will serve African-Americans and Latino and Asian immigrants.
Rufino Domínguez
General Coordinator
Oaxaca Indigenous Binational Coalition
P.O. Box 106
Fresno, CA 93707
Phone: (559) 499-1178, Fax: (559) 268- 0484, E-mail: fiob@pacbell.net
Web: www.laneta.apc.org/fiob/
Sarah James, Spokesperson of Gwich'in Nation, Arctic Village, AK In her 13 years as the Gwich'in Nation's advocate and leader, Sarah James has fought to protect her tribe's culture, landscape and environment. As the Nation's official representative to the outside world, she has also become an adept and outspoken coalition builder for the interests and rights of indigenous people. She is co-founder and leader of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, which is striving to protect the caribou and other wildlife essential to Gwich'in culture by keeping the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge free from oil exploration. In addition to advocacy for her own community, James has become a recognized international spokesperson on the long-term cumulative effects of pollution on indigenous peoples.
Sarah James
Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government
P.O. Box 51
Arctic Village, AK 99722
Phone: (907) 587-5315, Fax: (907) 587-5316, E-mail: sarahjamesav@hotmail.com
Wing Lam, Executive Director
Chinese Staff & Workers' Association, New York, NY Through organizing, training and legal action, Wing Lam has helped bring better working and living conditions not only to immigrant Chinese but also to others working in exploitative conditions in garment manufacturing, restaurants, construction and building custodial services. Working with other organizations, his association has helped create an independent union of restaurant workers and the Chinese Construction Workers Association; won more than $10 million in back pay, lost wages and damages for garment and restaurant workers; won a landmark decision against the City of New York to stop the construction of a luxury tower that would have caused mass displacement of low-income people; and increased the hiring of Chinese and other minority workers in the construction of a federal courthouse in Foley Square.
Wing Lam
Executive Director
Chinese Staff & Workers' Association
P.O. Box 13041
New York, NY 10013-0995
Phone: (212) 619 7979, Fax: (212) 374-1506, E-mail: wingshung@mail.com
Betsy Lieberman, Executive Director
AIDS Housing of Washington, Seattle, WA Betsy Lieberman works locally and nationally to secure adequate housing for people with H.I.V./AIDS. In Seattle she has developed three programs that offer 125 beds/units for individuals with H.I.V./AIDS and their families, including 35 that provide skilled nursing for those in the late stages of AIDS and other terminal illnesses. Nationally, Lieberman has sought to raise public awareness of the need for AIDS housing through such activities as organizing an annual Leadership Institute for AIDS housing directors. Her organization has published books on how to develop and operate successful housing programs, organized four national AIDS housing conferences and helped establish the National AIDS Housing Coalition. All these efforts have provided crucial technical assistance and encouragement to thousands of H.I.V./AIDS housing activists and providers nationwide.
Betsy Lieberman
Executive Director
AIDS Housing of Washington
2014 East Madison St., Suite 200
Seattle, WA 98122
Phone: (206) 322-9444 ext. 12, Fax: (206) 322-9298, E-mail: betsy@aidshousing.org
Web: www.aidshousing.org Dolores Martínez, Kamilo Rivera, Marisela Salinas and Rafael Ventura
Justice for Janitors Campaign, Local 1877 Service Employees International Union, Los Angeles, CA It took 15 years and painstaking grass-roots organizing, but Martínez, Rivera, Salinas and Ventura did what many thought was impossible: They led a successful campaign to unionize fellow building-service workers in Los Angeles County. That effort—supported by other workers, religious institutions and community residents—spurred a nationwide campaign called Justice for Janitors, which is helping revitalize the labor movement. To date, it has changed the lives of 8,500 workers by securing such benefits as a living wage, family health coverage and vacation days.
Dolores Martínez
Local 1877, SEIU
280 3/6 South Coronado Pl.
Los Angeles, CA 90057
Phone: (213) 385-8912
Kamilo Rivera
Local 1877, SEIU
6421 South Victoria Ave. #5
Los Angeles, CA 90043
Phone: (213) 680-9567
Marisela Salinas
Local 1877, SEIU
c/o Mike García
6421 S. Victoria Ave. #5
Los Angeles, CA 90019 Phone: (323) 934-6021
Rafael Ventura
Local 1877, SEIU
1612 Rockwood St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Phone: (213) 481-9797
Kevin McDonald, President
Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers, Durham, NC By tackling drug addiction at every level, Kevin McDonald is proving that a holistic approach to drug treatment and rehabilitation can help adult drug addicts get back on their feet permanently. For example, besides offering a two-year residential treatment program, TROSA provides job training, work opportunities and help with housing and transportation. It has transformed an abandoned elementary school into a housing and commercial complex, which now includes warehouse space, private apartments and businesses ranging from construction to catering. These businesses have made TROSA largely financially self-supporting. In the past seven years, TROSA has grown from 15 residents to nearly 300 and has graduated more than 150 former addicts, many of whom had failed previous treatment programs.
Kevin R. McDonald
President
Triangle Residential Options for Substance
Abusers, Inc.
1820 James Street
Durham, NC 27707
Phone: (919) 419-1059, Fax: (919) 419-8314, E-mail: kmcdonald@trosainc.org
Web: www.TROSAinc.org
Margaret McHugh, Executive Director
New York Immigration Coalition, New York, NY Margie McHugh has built a powerful coalition of more than 150 immigrant rights groups to promote action at the local, state and federal levels on a wide range of immigration law, social service and education policy issues. Under McHugh's leadership, the coalition has won new resources for legal aid to immigrants, literacy classes for adults and the expansion of New York State's emergency food program. It has also helped to improve the quality of education for the city's immigrant students and offered translation and interpreting services for their parents. At the same time, the coalition has forged a strong working relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which has helped cut bureaucratic bottlenecks and reduce the backlog of citizenship applications from three years to one.
Margaret McHugh
Executive Director
New York Immigration Coalition
275 Seventh Ave., 9th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 627-2227, ext. 221, Fax: (212) 627-9314
Web: www.thenyic.org
Barbara Miller, Director
Silver Valley People's Action Coalition, Kellogg, ID In a part of the United States where mining for metal has had a devastating effect on the environment and public health, Barbara Miller has mobilized residents to force the cleanup of contamination. She has also created a network of health and policy officials who are examining the residual impacts of lead poisoning on public health throughout the Northwest. With Silver Valley as the starting point, the movement has spread across the region through such events as a Health Awareness Conference and a first-ever “town meeting,” which brought together officials in mining-affected areas with officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discuss ways to protect the environment and public health.
Barbara Miller
Director
Silver Valley People's Action Coalition
P. O. Box 362
Kellogg, ID 83837
Phone: (208) 784-8891, Fax: (208) 784-8891, E-mail: paccrcco@imbris.com
Web: www.nidlink.com/~paccrcco
D. Milo Mumgaard, Executive Director
Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, Lincoln, NE In offering organizational and legal support for new immigrants, welfare families and the rural poor, Milo Mumgaard has helped many communities pursue policy changes to improve the lives of Nebraska's most disadvantaged workers and families. For example, the Appleseed Center has forged a network of organizations determined to improve the safety of meatpacking plants—one of the main employers of immigrants. One result has been passage of a statewide Packinghouse Workers' Bill of Rights, which lays out conditions and standards for workers throughout the industry. Another has been a living-wage law for the city of Omaha. The center has also won environmental regulations aimed at protecting poor communities and the restoration of public assistance to 14,000 immigrants who had been denied federal coverage.
D. Milo Mumgaard
Executive Director
Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest
941 O Street, Suite 105
Lincoln, NE 68508
Phone: (402) 438-8853, Fax: (402) 438-0263, E-mail: neapplaw@aol.com
Web: NeEqualJustice.org
Bill Rauch, Artistic Director
Cornerstone Theater, Los Angeles, CA Bill Rauch is using the power of community theater in some very atypical settings to bring people together to discuss tough local issues. In generating such discussions, Cornerstone has proved that theater can have a broad and long-lasting ripple effect. Cornerstone is a multi-ethnic theater company that joins the talents of professional theater artists with those of people in various communities to create productions that are relevant to community concerns. Past Cornerstone productions have helped spur an AIDS education initiative in rural Virginia, the first-ever community discussion of de facto school segregation in a Mississippi town, a discussion of racial profiling in Los Angeles and a discussion about unwed mothers and morality in Oregon. Veterans of Cornerstone started the Watts Village Theater Company in Los Angeles, with Latino and African-American members.
Bill Rauch
Artistic Director
Cornerstone Theater Co.
708 Traction Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Phone: (213) 613-1700 ext.10, Fax: (213) 613-1714, Email: brauch@cornerstonetheater.org
Web: www.cornerstonetheater.org
Salvador Reza, Coordinator
Tonatierra Community Development Institute, Phoenix, AZ By galvanizing a highly visible sector of Phoenix immigrants—taco vendors—Salvador Reza has helped the city's entire Latino community win wider social acceptance and greater economic security. Reza mobilized the taco vendors to fight a city ordinance that would have made mobile stands illegal, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of people working the small food carts. He skillfully brought together groups on different sides of the issue—predominantly white neighborhood associations, the city's restaurant owners, Latino community and business activists and a top civil rights attorney—to build a broad coalition in support of the stands. It won passage of a new law that permits the stands to operate under regulations that meet neighborhood concerns. Reza is currently working with day laborers and local businesses to create a central facility where day laborers can gather to seek work.
Salvador Reza, Coordinator
Tonatierra Community Development Institute
P.O. Box 24009
Phoenix, Arizona 85074
Phone (602) 743-3876, Fax: (602) 252-6094, E-mail: tona@tonatierra.com
Web: www.tonatierra.com
Cassandra Shaylor and Cynthia Chandler, Codirectors
Justice Now, Oakland, CA Cassandra Shaylor and Cynthia Chandler have created the first legal teaching center in the United States that is focused solely on the rights of women prisoners. The program is creating a new generation of legal advocates—both inside and outside prisons—who are providing female inmates with the support, knowledge, skills and confidence to improve their lives in prison. Through a network of lawyers, law students and community organizers who are teamed with women in prison, the program reaches about 1,000 women a year. The primary emphases are on health care, family fragmentation and legal and human rights. Since November 2000, Shaylor and Chandler have won “compassionate releases” for five women with serious illnesses—a rare concession. They co-sponsored the first legislative hearing on incarcerated women ever held inside a prison. The testimony of prisoners led to the introduction of two bills in the state legislature to improve health care for women prisoners.
Cynthia Chandler, Codirector
Cassandra Shaylor, Codirector
Justice Now
1322 Webster Street, Suite 210
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 839-7654 Fax: (510) 839-7615, E-mail: wplan@pacbell.net, cshaylor@earthlink.net
Lateefah Simon, Executive Director
Center for Young Women's Development, San Francisco, CA Lateefah Simon is in the vanguard of a new approach to juvenile crime that is focusing on prevention and intervention rather than punishment of young female offenders. Simon seeks to give them the skills and confidence to help change the way the criminal justice system views and treats them. Through mutually reinforcing activities that include legal assistance, offender reintegration into society, leadership skills training and police outreach programs, Simon's center has helped thousands of young women improve their lives. At the same time, it works to transform the criminal justice system into one that reaches out instead of simply reacting.
Lateefah Simon
Executive Director
Center for Young Women's Development
1426 Fillmore Street, Suite 450
San Francisco, CA 94115
Phone: (415) 345-0263, Fax: (415) 345-0259, E-mail: lateefah@cywd.org
Web: www.cywd.org
Gustavo Torres, Executive Director
CASA of Maryland, Inc., Takoma Park, MD Gustavo Torres has distinguished himself as particularly skilled in building coalitions that mobilize communities across a broad range of issues. In addition to helping establish a formal leadership training program at the University of Maryland, he has helped generate $10 million in services and tax credits for Montgomery County. Torres regularly takes contingents of Latinos to the state's capital to speak out on issues of key importance to their communities, and he has joined forces with business to find hundreds of full-benefits jobs for local residents. Over the past eight years, Torres has expanded CASA from a $200,000 a year, five-staff operation serving 2,500 residents to a $1.5 million a year, 22-staff organization providing more than 19,000 people with services ranging from educational advocacy to legal services.
Gustavo Torres
Executive Director
CASA of Maryland, Inc.
310 Tulip Ave.
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Phone: (301) 270-0419, Fax: (301) 270-8659, E-mail: yotagri@aol.com
Phill Wilson, Director
African American AIDS Policy and Training Institute, Los Angeles, CA Convinced that the best way to fight H.I.V./AIDS is through knowledge, veteran AIDS policy advocate Phill Wilson created a think tank devoted to the dissemination of information and technical assistance. The institute's free monthly magazine, KujiSource, has become a powerful means for informing African Americans about how to treat and fight the spread of AIDS. Wilson has been especially effective in getting the African-American media, including 300 radio stations and 250 newspapers, to carry his message. To help expand this effort, Wilson joined with the University of Southern California to create the African-American H.I.V. University, a two-year program that trains people in treatment and prevention all over the United States. Graduates help interpret policy and research findings to keep the larger community informed about the latest developments in preventing and treating AIDS.
Phill Wilson
Director
African American AIDS Policy and Training Institute
1833 West 8th Street, Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90057
Phone: (213) 353-3610, Fax: (213) 989-0181, E-mail: phillw@aaainstitute.org
Web: www.aaainstitute.org
Ruth Wise, Executive Director
New Road Community Development Group, Exmore, VA Ruth Wise has made community organizing the basic means of bringing housing, economic opportunity and improved living conditions to Exmore, a rural community on the eastern shore of Virginia. Through the community development corporation that she created eight years ago, Wise has mobilized community residents to achieve a range of goals—from getting a community sewer and water infrastructure installed to building new homes and renovating existing ones to creating a program to assist first-time homebuyers. By working with private and public partners, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and VISTA, New Road has raised nearly $2 million toward its $6 million community revitalization plan. The plan envisions continued demolition of dilapidated housing, development of new rental units and the creation of a new community center.
Ruth Wise
Executive Director
New Road Community Development Group of Exmore, Inc.
P.O. Box 1296
Exmore, VA 23350
Phone: (757) 442-3797, Fax: (757) 442-2363, E-mail: nrcdg@intercom.net
The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.