In Harmony with Hope® and Elfen Works Awards
“We applaud those groups and individuals who are working to mitigate the problem of poverty in America. As a way of celebrating these efforts we announce the annual In Harmony with Hope Award. In addition, we invite visitors to nominate those deserving of recognition with an Elfen Works Award.”
Each year since 2007, The Elfenworks Foundation has paid tribute to a few select individuals who are working to create local abundance in our country through substantive, meaningful, and innovative change. The extraordinary people who are honored with an In Harmony with Hope award are creative social entrepreneurs who have developed innovative solutions to pressing needs in our society. The programs also hold out the promise of being replicable in communities across the country.
From health care and housing to child welfare and gang intervention, from integrating inmates into society and jobs training to urban agriculture and food distribution, the programs created by our In Harmony with Hope winners have demonstrated proven results and had significant impact.
We have a rigorous process that takes all year. Candidates for the annual award come to our attention through formal nominations and through ongoing research by members of the Elfenworks team. In addition to carefully selecting for innovation, creativity, scope and impact, we use a Seven Pillar Methodology given to Lauren Speeth, our founder, during a mentoring meeting early in 2006. This methodology was first used by Elfenworks for projects, and later adapted by our founder to evaluate all potential award candidates. The seven criteria are:
- Vision: follow a vision, tuning out naysayers.
- Chasm: go where you don’t duplicate the good work of others.
- Special Skills: go where your special skills make a difference.
- Partnership: work in partnership with the stakeholders.
- Credit sharing: share the credit with your partners.
- Feedback: constantly measure for course correction.
- Long term view: allow for bumps along the path to great successes.
Each nomination undergoes a thorough investigation that includes research and speaking with individuals who have worked with the nominee. A file is prepared for each of the strongest candidates and they are presented to the foundation’s Board of Trustees for final selection in the spring of each year. The annual In Harmony with Hope awards ceremony takes place in the early fall in the California bay area. If you have someone in mind you think would make an ideal award recipient, please visit elfenworks.org/nominate or you can download and fill out this form, and send it to The Elfenworks Foundation, 20 Park Road, Suite D, Burlingame, CA 94010.
Thus far, we have recognized the following visionaries for their remarkable efforts: Will Allen (Growing Power), Gregory Boyle (Homeboy Industries), Rosalynn Carter (The Carter Center), Joyce Dattner (Bay Area All Stars), Robert Egger (DC Central Kitchen and V3), Dr. Paul Farmer (Partners in Health), Rosanne Haggerty (Common Ground), Lois Lee (Children of the Night), Dr. Jack McConnell (Volunteers in Medicine), Paul Minorini (Boys Hope Girls Hope), Rebecca Onie (Health Leads), and Peter Young (Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment). Our next group of honorees will be presented with their awards on September 20, 2011.
The Elfenworks Foundation also accepts nominations for the Elfen Works Award, as a way of celebrating lesser-known individuals or organizations that are working to create change in their local communities. The Elfen Works Award program aims to recognize those who have otherwise received little recognition– until now.
2011 In Harmony with Hope Award Honorees
[Press Release IHH 2011] [About IHH 2011 Award] [Live Streaming]
Brenda Krause Eheart, PhD (Founder), Generations of Hope Development Corporation, generationsofhope.org
Disheartened by the state of the foster care system in this country, Brenda Eheart, who had spent years researching Illinois’ foster care system in her role in academia, conceived of an intentional intergenerational village filled with parents raising and adopting foster children and senior citizens volunteering to help support the kids and the community in exchange for lowered rents. Hope Meadows opened on a closed military base in Illinois in 1994. More than 15 years later, a dozen families live in the community, free of rent. In exchange, they agree to adopt three or four foster care system children who have slim chances of finding permanent homes. Those children, once the most difficult to place, boast a high 89% permanency rate. [harmony page]
Jim McCorkell (Founder), Admission Possible, admissionpossible.org
When Jim McCorkell founded Admission Possible (AP) in 2000, he joined together his personal knowledge of what it means to grow up in poverty with his belief that education provides the most likely path out of poverty. His goal was to make postsecondary education a reality for the 200,000 at-risk kids each year who graduate high school prepared for college but who, thanks to cultural and functional barriers, aren’t able to get there. Admission Possible delivers highly personalized support to its 7,000 low-income students in the Twin Cities area, Milwaukee, and, starting this year, in Omaha, Nebraska. McCorkell was the first person in the country to leverage the AmeriCorps service infrastructure for college access, and it is essential to the model’s success. [harmony page]
Bill Milliken (Founder), Communities In Schools, communitiesinschools.org
All his life, Bill Milliken had been told he was dumb, so he dropped out of school and began hanging out on the streets. A chance encounter with a caring adult who taught him to believe in a different life story, changed Milliken’s life forever. Within a few years, he and a friend had founded 18 schools they called “street academies” in Harlem. Over the next 30-40 years, his work has evolved into what is now the country’s largest dropout prevention program, Communities In Schools (CIS). It was founded in the belief that programs don’t change kids but relationships do. CIS is a unique community model that forms partnerships between schools, families, and community leaders to build a solid support system for students. [harmony page]
2010 In Harmony with Hope Award Honorees
[Press Release] [Post Press Release] [About IHH 2010 Award] [Live Streaming]
Will Allen (Founder), Growing Power, growingpower.org
Will Allen has spent the past two decades crusading to bring healthy, low-cost, sustainable food to the food deserts of our nation’s urban centers through his organization, Growing Power. From a 2.5-acre farm located in the heart of Milwaukee, Allen is feeding the city’s poor, educating a nation about urban farming, and mitigating racism by empowering the minority communities he serves. His farming model incorporates innovative cultivation and distribution network design, including aquaculture, vermiculture, horticulture composting, soil reclamation, food distribution, and beekeeping. Growing Power also runs collaborative projects, teen internships and training projects, which engage city youth in producing healthy foods for their communities.
Rosanne Haggerty (Founder), Common Ground, commonground.org
Rosanne Haggerty’s tested innovations in reducing homelessness, rooted in her decades spent directing Common Ground (the largest developer of supportive housing in the country), are being scaled nationally through her leadership of the newly formed Community Solutions. Its 100,000 Homes Campaign coordinates the efforts of national organizations and local communities to collectively house 100,000 homeless individuals and families by July 2013. At Common Ground, she helped house 5,000 individuals in and around New York. The 20-block area around Times Square experienced an 87% drop in homelessness following the opening of Common Ground’s first rehabilitated property.
Rebecca Onie (Founder), Project Health, projecthealth.org
Project HEALTH changed its name to Health Leads on November 8, 2010.
To read more about their new name, click here.
Rebecca Onie was just 17 when she lit upon a simple but powerful idea: college students could volunteer to work with physician/nurse mentors to locate critically needed social resources for children visiting pediatric clinics. As Onie learned, a medical approach does not always solve a child’s chronic health problems if the family is making decisions between paying rent or putting food on the table—much less paying for the prescription. Today, 900 student volunteers help 18,000 people obtain critical resources every year through Health Lead’s Family Help Desks. And, a new generation of leaders is being training to change the system of health care delivery in this country.
2009 In Harmony with Hope Award Honorees
Father Gregory Boyle, S.J. (Founder), Homeboy Industries, homeboy-industries.org
Father Greg Boyle’s Homeboy Industries is a one-stop shop for those who have decided to leave the world of LA’s gangs behind. Homeboy provides addiction and recovery programs; a full curriculum of classes that includes anger management, parenting, GED and computer classes; and free services such as tattoo removal, mental health counseling, job development, legal counseling and case management. Former gang members help manage and run the enterprise, which includes a bakery, café, and silkscreen operation, and maintenance and retail shops that fund about a third of Homeboy’s operations. Fr. Greg has been a beacon of hope in a blighted landscape. His efforts have directly impacted the lives of more than 100,000 people.
Robert Egger (Founder), V3 & DC Central Kitchen, dccentralkitchen.org
Robert Egger founded the DC Central Kitchen in the mid-1980s, and turned the food bank model on its head. Instead of providing a simple handout, Egger uses food as a vehicle for change: clients become employed cooks through the Kitchen’s Culinary Jobs Training Program; college students learn about service and business in the Campus Kitchen Project; and 4,500 of Washington, DC’s hungry are fed as the Kitchen recycles more than one ton of food every day. The Kitchen additionally provides street outreach and nutrition education for at-risk kids. Egger has also galvanized the nonprofit industry through his latest venture, V3, pushing for reform and a place on the national stage.
Rev. Peter G. Young (Founder), Peter Young Housing, Industries, and Treatment, pyhit.com
Father Peter Young has helped inmates and parolees overcome their addictions for more than half a century. Peter Young Housing Industries and Treatment (PYHIT) evolved out of Fr. Young’s firm belief that effective recovery is only possible if treatment is followed up with housing and jobs training. Fr. Young has forged successful public-private partnerships across New York State. The network of treatment, housing and job training programs spans 100 sites. Three thousand people rely on services from PYHIT every day. PYHIT boasts a recidivism rate of less than 10 percent. In all, Fr. Young has helped hundreds of thousands move from addiction to becoming taxpaying members of society.
2008 In Harmony with Hope Award Honorees
Lois Lee (Founder & Director), Children of the Night, childrenofthenight.org
Lois Lee has spent the past 30 years advocating for and providing help to thousands of children between the ages of 11 and 17 who are forced into prostitution. Children of the Night (COTN) started as a walk-in crisis center and 24-hour hotline. Three decades later, the hotline’s highly trained staff receives 10,000 calls from desperate kids each year. An in-home program started in 1994 provides shelter and nurture for up to 100 teens, and features an onsite school and college placement program. In 2011, Lee initiated With Out Walls (WOW) to bring COTN’s award-winning programs to underfunded and undeveloped teen shelters across the country.
Dr. Jack McConnell (Founder), Volunteers in Medicine, volunteersinmedicine.org
Jack McConnell created the first Volunteers in Medicine Clinic in 1994, when he paired a group of retired medical personnel who were searching for a way to continue practicing their profession with a large uninsured population on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He worked with the state legislature to pass a bill to create a special volunteer medical license that would allow retired physicians to practice medicine at free clinics without taking the licensure exam or paying the fee. Today, the Volunteers in Medicine Institute shepherds the replication of that program—there are 86 VIM clinics in 25 states whose 11,000 volunteers deliver care to more than 100,000 uninsured Americans each year.
2007 In Harmony with Hope Award Honorees
Rosalynn Carter of The Carter Center,cartercenter.org
Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of The Carter Center, created the center’s Mental Health Program, which combats the stigma against mental illness and promotes improved mental health care. She chairs the center’s Mental Health Task Force of eminent persons in the field, and each year brings together leaders of national mental health organizations to foster consensus on pivotal issues. Her advocacy over the decades led to the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act in 2008. Lending her voice to many important causes, Carter also promotes early childhood immunization through the nationwide “Every Child by Two” campaign and assists caregivers through the Rosalynn Carter Institute.
[harmony page] [about our Carter Center partnership]
Joyce Dattner (Founder & Director), Bay Area All Stars, allstars.org
Joyce Dattner brought one of the country’s largest antiviolence youth development programs to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2002. The All Stars Project (ASP of SF Bay Area) promotes youth development through an innovative performance-based model. This supplemental education approach, which recognizes outside-of-school learning opportunities as crucial to urban children’s success in school and life, provides educational and performing arts activities for thousands of poor and minority young people around the Bay Area. By allowing youth to participate fully in all aspects of its programs, ASP of SF Bay Area empowers its participants to fully develop as learners, producers and leaders.
Dr. Paul Farmer (Co-Founder), Partners In Health, pih.org
Paul Farmer has been successfully delivering quality health care to millions of the world’s poor for nearly 30 years. It began with a visit to Haiti. Today, Partners In Health (PIH) has a presence in 12 countries, including the US. All projects share common goals: to care for patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. PIH’s Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment project employs community health workers to monitor a group of Boston’s ill and marginalized patients and ensure that their medical and social needs are being met.
Paul Minorini (President & CEO) of Boys Hope Girls Hope, boyshopegirlshope.org
Paul Minorini has been involved with Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH) for nearly half his life. The organization helps academically capable and motivated children in need meet their full potential and become men and women for others by providing family-like support in a home-like environment, and opportunities and education through college. Under his leadership, Boys Hope Girls Hope began a community-based outreach program for children whose home situation did not require out-of-home placement, effectively doubling the number the children that BHGH can serve. Based in Bridgeton, Missouri, Boys Hope Girls Hope currently serves children in 15 U.S. cities, plus Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru.
Elfen Works Award Honorees
Our Elfen Works Award is meant to serve as a grass-roots involvement-building tool. By enabling private citizens to nominate others they feel worthy of recognition, they may themselves be more likely to get involved in helping others.
To nominate an individual for an Elfen Works Award, please use our contact page to send an email and note the subject is a nomination for the award. Only nominations received by email will be considered (no telephone nominations please). Please include
- contact information for yourself (including email address)
- contact information for the nominee: include full name with proper spelling, mailing address for certificate, and the URL if possible of any the organization this individual is associated with
- reason you are making this nomination
From time to time, our team will review the nominations we collect and select candidates for recognition, and winners will be posted on this website, until the list is too long to include online. The first three recipients were honored on August 8th, 2007 [see award]. The following individuals have been selected for their positive contributions, their involvement, or their helping hand in the community:
- Diane Nilan—for putting a face on thousands of homeless persons in America, and for advocating tirelessly on their behalf for more than 25 years
- Ethan Barolette, Sophia Samant & Emily Sullivan—for providing 18,000 meals for San Franciscans in need, before they even started kindergarten
- Linda Carlson—for helping women discover their inner strength through her leadership of the Women’s Recovery Association
- Shawny Anderson—for her exemplary service, from New Orleans to Haiti, and her remarkable teaching skills that are helping to create a new generation of socially active citizens
- Kathleen Haser—for her quarter century of inspired leadership of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps East
- Prince William of Wales—for spending a winter night on the streets of a gritty London neighborhood to draw attention to the plight of the homeless
- Phil Lebherz—for educating consumers about their rights to basic health care coverage though the Foundation for Health Coverage Education
- Holly Carver, Crystal Brown, Cece Kaufman Himelstein, Erica Hunt, Michelle Parker & Linda Schaffer—for banding together and organizing opposition to continued cuts in the California state funding for education
- Phoebe Russell—for raising nearly $4,000 to benefit the San Francisco Food Bank—and she’s just a preschooler![more about Phoebe Russell]
- John F. Mello—for his Food Bank Music CD
- Kermit Kubitz, Jonas Svallin and Dr. Sang-ick Chang—for bravely stepping in and saving a precious human life
- Ursula Morgenstern—for creating and continuing Backpackpalooza [more about backpackpalooza]
- …your nominee here?
