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The 2011 Hidden Heroes Award Ceremony was held on Sunday, November 20th at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. In addition to the Hidden Heroes listed below, Mayor David Dinkins accepted a Lifetime Achievement award presented by Harry Belafonte, last year's Lifetime Achievement Awardee. |
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| The 2012 Hidden Heroes Award Ceremony will be held on Sunday, November 25. | ||||
We welcome your donation to support our Hidden Heroes program.  |
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| Hidden Heroes are ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things to change the world for the better. Our award honors and supports social activism that gets results. The Hidden Heroes awards program, which was launched in 2009, aims to inspire, educate and reward people who take personal responsibility for healing the world - carrying on the spirit and the love that inspired Andy to travel to Mississippi in 1964. The Hidden Heroes Award is presented each year to as many as five individuals whose work exemplifies the Foundation’s origins and mission: promoting human dignity, civil rights and social justice through actions characterized by great personal initiative, selflessness, fearlessness, compassion, imagination, and achievement. | ||||
| 2011 Awards Winners: | ||||
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Deborah Bial, President and Founder, Posse Foundation Deborah Bial has been chosen as a Hidden Hero for her dedication and success in supporting the education and personal growth of promising students from disadvantaged urban backgrounds. Deborah founded The Posse Foundation in 1989 , which has been responsible for supporting the higher education of 3,658 high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes. Posse enables these students to pursue personal and academic excellence by placing them in supportive, multicultural teams (Posses) of 10 students. The organization’s partner colleges and universities award Posse Scholars four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships – and Posse students graduate with a very high success rate. Posse’s outstanding young leaders and scholars are the hope for our nation’s future, as they will ultimately apply their leadership skills and diverse backgrounds to develop consensus and solutions to complex social problems. The Posse Foundation is one of only 10 organizations selected by President Barack Obama to receive a portion of the president’s $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize award money. |
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Yusuf Burgess, Family Intervention Specialist, Green Tech High Charter School Brother Yusuf Burgess has been selected as one of the 2011 Hidden Heroes for his inspirational work in fostering youth development, environmental education, and mentoring to underserved urban youth. Through challenging outdoor experiences and excursions into the Catskills, Adirondacks and beyond, he enriches the lives of at-risk youth by helping them discover self-awareness, discipline, teamwork, and self-worth in the great outdoors. Through his commitment as founder and Chairperson of the Environmental Awareness Network of Diversity in Conservation (EANDC) and New York’s representative on the Children and Nature Network, Brother Yusuf is a catalyst for using the power of nature to transform urban youth. In his work at Green Tech High Charter School in Albany, NY, high school students are being engaged, inspired and prepared for an ongoing relationship with the environment. In his own words, “they are exploring a deeper sense of place”. Part of his approach is to take urban youth on camping, boating, hunting, fishing, hiking, and skiing excursions, getting them involved and engaged in pursuits that take them outside the often-constricting worlds they live in. |
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Susan Retik, President and Co-Founder, Beyond the 11th Susan Retik understands the importance of empowering women touched by personal tragedy. After losing her husband on September 11, 2001, she co-founded Beyond the 11th, an organization that empowers widows in Afghanistan who have been afflicted by war, terrorism, and oppression. Beyond the 11th funds educational and training programs that help widows gain the skills necessary to generate their own income and become self-sufficient. Susan has been chosen as one of the 2011 Hidden Heroes for her work, which reaches beyond differences of culture and geography to embrace the most essential of connections: humanity. The approximately 2 million Afghan widows are among the most impoverished and vulnerable peoples in one of the poorest countries in the world, yet they are often overlooked. Her dedication to society’s most vulnerable to affect meaningful social change embodies the fundamental ideals of the Hidden Heroes Awards Program. In 2010, Susan was welcomed to the White House and was awarded a 2010 Citizens Medal by President Barack Obama for advancing women’s rights and demonstrating the power of America’s ideals. Learn more about Beyond the 11th > |
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The Rev. Nicholas S. Richards, President and Co-founder, The Abyssinian Fund Rev. Nicholas S. Richards has been chosen as one of this year’s Hidden Heroes for his commitment and action toward reducing poverty in Ethiopia. Rev. Nicholas, also the Assistant Minister for Global Outreach at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, founded The Abyssinian Fund with the goal of developing economic opportunities, and thus improving the quality of life, for Ethiopian coffee farmers and their families. The Fund is actively working toward its mission to reduce poverty in Ethiopia – one community at a time. The Fund partners with local coffee farm cooperatives to provide the training, resources and marketing needed to increase production and sales in the global marketplace. The Fund’s innovative programs help the co-op’s farmers produce a higher-quality product so they can be more competitive on the international coffee market. Through this partnership, agricultural proceeds will ultimately be reinvested into clean water, health, infrastructure and education initiatives that will benefit the local community at large. In its first farming partnership alone, the Fund has helped to improve the livelihoods of the 700 farmers in the co-op, resulting in better conditions for as many as 3,000 people. Learn more about The Abyssinian Fund > |
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Past Hidden Heroes |
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Visit our application page for details about how to
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We welcome your support of the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Your donation provides vital assistance to these and future Hidden Heroes. Thank you! |
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