Awards, Apr 20, 2006

The following awards have been presented for work in advocacy, fund raising, nonprofit leadership, philanthropy, and other areas.

Advocacy. The Gleitsman Foundation (Malibu, Calif.) has selected Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, co-founders of the ShoreBank Corporation of Chicago, and Julie Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (Washington), to share the 2006 Citizen Activist Award and its $100,000 prize. Mr. Grzywinski and Ms. Houghton were selected for their group’s widely emulated model, which provides community-development and financial services in underserved urban neighborhoods. Ms. Stewart was selected for her successful efforts to challenge the inflexible penalties required by mandatory sentencing laws, even in cases involving non-violent, first-time offenders.

The foundation also presented a special Citizen Activist Extraordinaire award to Gloria Steinem, the women’s-rights activist who was the founding editor of Ms. Magazine and helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus (Washington) and other groups.

Community development. The National Neighborhood Coalition (Washington) has given its 2006 Making a Difference Award to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (Washington) and its 2006 Pablo Eisenberg Award for Neighborhood Leadership to the D.C. Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force (Washington).

Community service. Volvo Cars of North America (Rockleigh, N.J.) has presented its 2006 Volvo for Life Awards, which honor “unsung heroes” working to improve the environment, quality of life, and safety. The winner in the environment category is Jane Williams, a former science teacher who created California Communities Against Toxins (Rosamond), a coalition of more than 70 local groups working to curb pollution. The winner in the quality-of-life category is Ingida Asfaw, an Ethiopian-born heart surgeon now living in Detroit who founded a network of more than 500 medical and nonmedical personnel who help provide health care in Ethiopia, which has a critical shortage of health-care providers. The winner in the safety category is Gary Slutkin, a Chicago epidemiologist whose organization, CeaseFire, uses community-involvement and behavior-prevention techniques to predict and stem violence. Each award carries a $50,000 prize to be donated to a charity chosen by the winner.

Environment. Generations United (Washington) has announced the recipients of its inaugural Intergenerational Environmental Health Awards, which honor groups that encourage children, adolescents, and senior citizens to work together to improve environmental conditions in their communities. The winning organizations — each of which receives $5,000 — are Community Celebration of Place (Minneapolis), Friends of Blackwater (Charleston, W.Va.), the Peak Center (Lansdale, Pa.), Tricycle Gardens (Richmond, Va.), and Youth Count-Youth Volunteer Corps (Prescott Valley, Ariz.).

Human rights. The Reebok Human Rights Foundation (Canton, Mass.) has presented its 2006 Reebok Human Rights Award, which honors activists 30 years old or younger who have greatly advanced human-rights issues through nonviolence means. The recipients, each of whom receives a $50,000 grant to continue their work, are:

— Li Dan, 27, who has been instrumental in bringing attention to the plight of people with HIV in China and in pressuring the Chinese government to respond to the country’s rapidly escalating HIV rates.

— Rachel Lloyd, 30, who founded Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, a group that provides counseling and other services to underage girls caught in the sex industry in New York and advocates their fair treatment in the criminal-justice system.

— Khurram Parvez, 28, who works in his war-torn region of Kashmir to promote peaceful approaches to ending the ongoing conflict that has uprooted the lives of many ordinary Kashmiris.

— Otto Saki, 24, who supports fellow human-rights defenders in Zimbabwe, including responding to a government-sponsored mass eviction and demolition campaign and helping thousands of families apply to the country’s High Court to prevent the demolitions and seek restitution.