Awards, Dec 14, 2000

The following awards have been presented for work in nonprofit management, philanthropy, and volunteerism:

Community service. Do Something (New York) has named the 2000 recipients of its Brick Awards for Community Leadership, which are given to individual Americans under the age of 30 who are successfully building their communities “brick by brick,” and whose work is structured to have a lasting influence. Do Something is a national nonprofit group that encourages people in their 20’s to become involved in community service. The first-place winner received a $100,000 grant; eight additional winners each received a $10,000 grant. First place was awarded to Kelly Hill, founder and executive director of Sisters Offering Support (Honolulu), for her group’s work helping women and girls who want to leave the commercial sex industry by offering counseling and education. This year’s other winners are:

— Tonya Allen, director of the Warren/Conner Development Coalition (Detroit), who organized churches to increase local childhood-immunization rates and neighborhood groups to secure grants for development projects.

— Christopher Barbic, founder, director, and teacher at the Youth Engaged in Service (YES) College Preparatory School (Houston), a public charter school that serves inner-city students with a personalized curriculum that includes community service.

— Heather Barr, a staff attorney at the Urban Justice Center (New York) who led efforts to help mentally ill inmates leave jail and receive treatment in alternative programs.

— Jarvis Johnson, executive director of the Phoenix Outreach Youth Center (Houston), which provides students from low-income families with computer training, mentors, and tutors.

— Amy Lemley, co-founder and executive director of the First Place Fund for Youth (Oakland, Calif.), a group that offers education, loans, and training to aid former foster children.

— Alex Poeter, founder and executive director of Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (Chicago), a community-development organization.

— Andrew Ramirez Robertson, deputy director of Border Water Works (McAllen, Tex.), which teaches residents of communities along the Mexican border how to build their own sewer and water systems.

— Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Los Angeles), which advocates for civil rights, health benefits, and a more-efficient naturalization process.

The 2000 Community Partnership Award has been presented to the Prisoner and Family Ministry of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (Des Plaines) by Mutual of America Life Insurance (New York). The award is given to nonprofit organizations that created partnerships with public, private, and social organizations to improve the community. The Prisoner and Family Ministry worked with the Illinois Department of Corrections and Habitat for Humanity International on the Building Homes, Rebuilding Lives program, which trained adult and juvenile prisoners as builders for Habitat for Humanity families.

Liberal arts. The University of Louisville (Ky.) has announced the 2001 Grawemeyer Awards “to honor powerful ideas” in five fields. The awards, established by H. Charles Grawemeyer’s foundation, carry a $200,000 honorarium, and need not be given out every year. The recipients are:

— Education. William G. Bowen, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (New York), and Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), for their book, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton University Press). Each man is donating his share of the award to a charity.

— Improving world order. Janine Wedel, an anthropologist affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, for her book, Collision and Collusion: the Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998 (St. Martin’s Press).

— Music composition. Pierre Boulez, a French composer and conductor, for his chamber piece, “Sur Incises.”

— Psychology. Michael Posner, director of Cornell University’s Sackler Institute, in New York, and Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen, professors at Washington University (St. Louis), were the first winners of the psychology prize for their work in cognitive neuroscience; they have collaborated on ways to assess mental operations through brain images.

— Religion. James L. Kugel, a professor of Hebrew literature at Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), for his book on the origins of common interpretations of biblical passages, The Bible As It Was (Harvard University Press).

Public service. The Advertising Council (New York) has presented its 2000 Public Service Award to Gerald Levin, chairman and chief executive officer of Time Warner, and Robert E. (Ted) Turner, the corporation’s vice chairman. The award recognizes business leaders who demonstrate commitment to community service and volunteerism. Mr. Levin has supported programs to improve literacy and education, and Mr. Turner has worked for environmental causes and donated $1-billion to the United Nations Foundation.

Violence prevention. The winners of the 2000 California Peace Prize for preventing youth violence in the state were named by the California Wellness Foundation (Woodland Hills). Each of the following received a $25,000 prize:

— Fr. Gregory Boyle, who created Jobs for a Future/Homeboy Industries (Los Angeles), which helps educate and find jobs for gang-affiliated youth, and offers services such as tattoo removal.

— Matt Sanchez, of Santa Barbara, a former gang leader who organized peace treaties between local gangs and began Hood in the Woods, a program to prevent children from joining gangs and help them learn conflict-resolution skills.

— Gianna Tran, associate director at the East Bay Asian Youth Center (Oakland), who has led the center’s efforts to create a multicultural, multilingual human-services provider for youths.