Awards, Oct 16, 2003

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

Arts. The American Association of Museums (Washington) has presented the Pew Charitable Trusts (Philadelphia) with its 2003 Medal for Distinguished Philanthropy. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (Washington) nominated the foundation to recognize its assistance in restoring the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem.

The Business Committee for the Arts (Long Island City, N.Y.) and Forbes magazine (New York) have presented the 2003 Business in the Arts Awards, which honor companies that have demonstrated outstanding vision, leadership, and commitment in supporting arts groups. The awards were distributed in five categories:

— Founders Award, for long-term support of the arts: FleetBoston Financial Corporation.

— Leadership Award, for a business leader who has developed and promoted business-arts alliances: John C. Hampton, chairman of the Board of Directors of Hampton Affiliates (Portland, Ore.).

— Commitment Awards, for support of the arts for 10 years or longer: LaValley Building Supply (Newport, N.H.) and Raymond James Financial (St. Petersburg, Fla.).

— Innovation Awards, for groundbreaking partnerships with the arts: CDFM2 Architecture (Kansas City, Mo.) and Morgan Stanley (New York).

— New Initiative Awards, for support of the arts for five years or less: Ocean National Bank (Portsmouth, N.H.), and Covergys Corporation (Cincinnati).

The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Trust (New York) has announced the recipient of its 2003 award for achievement in the arts. Bill T. Jones, co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (New York), was honored for the innovative use of movement, music, text, and video in his choreography. The winner of the Gish Prize is selected by a committee of artists and carries a cash award of approximately $250,000.

Corporate giving. The White House and the Conference Board (New York) have presented the Ron Brown Awards for Corporate Leadership in employee and community relations. Cisco Systems (San Jose, Calif.) was honored for its Networking Academy, which teaches Internet-technology skills to students throughout the world. Fannie Mae (Washington) was recognized for a program that helps its employees purchase homes.

Leadership. The Ford Foundation (New York) has named the recipients of its 2003 Leadership for a Changing World awards, which honor individuals and groups of people who are tackling social problems. Each award, given in partnership with the Advocacy Institute (Washington) and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York U., is accompanied by $100,000 to advance the recipient’s work and $15,000 for supporting activities over two years. The winners are:

— Arnold Aprill, executive director of Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, an organization that brings artists and teachers together to design collaborative curriculums that connect the arts to academic subjects.

— Eddie Bautista, director of community planning at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, who has led community-organizing campaigns to block the building of additional garbage dumps, power plants, and incinerators in low-income neighborhoods, and to increase housing and health services for people with HIV/AIDS.

— Andrea Cruz, director of Southeast Georgia Communities Project (Lyons), who has identified and worked to solve problems facing Latino migrant farmworkers and their families through such projects as developing a network of interpreters for medical visits and creating an HIV education and prevention program.

— Hawaiian Community Assets (Wailuku), an organization led by Kehaulani Filimoe`atu and Blossom Feiteira that helps Native Hawaiians gain access to homesteads.

— John Logue, director of Ohio Employee Ownership Center (Kent), who helps create employee-owned companies and increase the financial assets of those employees.

— Low-Income Families’ Empowerment Through Education (Oakland, Calif.), a grass-roots nonprofit group through which Diana Spatz, Leilani Luia, Heather Jackson, Sylvia Cabrales, and Anita Rees advocate changes in welfare policies to help low-income parents become self-sufficient.

— Nobuko Miyamoto, director of Great Leap (Los Angeles), who founded this multicultural performing-arts organization to bring performances, workshops, and artists’ residencies to public schools, colleges, and other audiences.

— Montana Human Rights Network (Helena), a membership organization led by Ken Toole and Christine Kaufmann that promotes equality and justice, challenges intolerance, and organizes people to press for policy changes.

— Parents United for Responsible Education (Chicago), a group of parents and teachers led by Wanda Hopkins, Johnny O. Holmes, Ismael Vargas, and Julie Woestehoff that seeks to hold government officials accountable for problems in the Chicago public-school system.

— Rámon Ramírez, president of Pineros y Compesinos Unidos del Noroeste (Woodburn, Ore.), who helped to found this farmworkers union and led the first union-organized agriculture strike in Oregon.

— Abby Scher, director of the Independent Press Association-New York, who has supported ethnic newspapers and magazines serving immigrant and low-income neighborhoods in New York.

— Marilyn J. Smith, executive director of Abused Deaf Women’s Advocacy Services (Seattle), who educates the public about sexual and domestic violence against deaf and deaf-blind women and children.

— Tenants’ and Workers’ Support Committee of Northern Virginia-Unity Chapter (Alexandria), an organization through which Sheryl Bell, Jon Liss, Silvia Portillo, Edgar Rivera, and Maria Amalia Ruiz have stopped mass evictions of low-income black and Latino tenants in Alexandria, Va., and advocated a “living wage” law in the state.

— Richard Townsell, executive director of the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (Chicago), who developed a youth-education program in western Chicago, created an educational-technology center, and restored low-cost apartments and houses.

— United Domestic Workers of America, Domestic Workers Home Care Center (San Diego), through which Fahari Jeffers and Ken Seaton-Msemaji advocate the rights of domestic workers.

— Marcy Westerling, executive director of the Rural Organizing Project (Scappoose, Ore.), who has created small forums for people to engage in political discussions in rural towns in Oregon.

— Lily Yeh, executive director of the Village of Arts and Humanities (Philadelphia), who turned an abandoned lot in north Philadelphia into a summer art park, and who has involved local residents in refurbishing abandoned homes, creating after-school programs, and opening a crafts center.

Nonprofit leadership. Independent Sector (Washington) has named the Southern Mutual Help Association (New Iberia, La.) the recipient of the 2003 Leadership IS Award. The association promotes economic development in rural areas and helps towns create programs to improve residents’ quality of life. The award, which is accompanied by a $10,000 grant, recognizes a nonprofit organization that fosters leadership among its board and staff members, volunteers, and clients.

Political thought. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (Milwaukee) has presented its inaugural Bradley Prizes to honor outstanding achievement consistent with the foundation’s mission, which includes “the promotion of liberal democracy, democratic capitalism, and a vigorous defense of American institutions.” The recipients, who each receive a $250,000 cash prize:

— Mary Ann Glendon, a professor of law at Harvard U. (Cambridge, Mass.), whose scholarship focuses on family law and human-rights law.

— Leon R. Kass, a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the U. of Chicago and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington), who has written several books on biomedical ethics.

— Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes a nationally syndicated opinion column for The Washington Post.

— Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow in public policy at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace (Palo Alto, Calif.), who has written 30 books on topics including racial preferences, political conflict, and the marketplace.