Three local groups honored at community-partnership luncheon
Three local organizations have been presented with the university's Community Partnership Awards, which recognize programs that benefit the local community and represent successful community partnerships between Stanford and its neighbors. This year's recipients were English in Action, Fresh Lifelines for Youth and the Mural Music and Arts Project.
The Office of Public Affairs hosted a luncheon at the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto on May 15 to honor the recipients, and just as in each of the previous three years, organizers said the room was filled to capacity. Among the 160 guests were Stanford staff, faculty, students, community leaders and local officials, including the mayors of Palo Alto and Menlo Park and Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss.
This year's honorees were selected from a pool of 19 nominations. Here's more about the 2007 Community Partnership Award winners:
English in Action is a conversational English language program run by the Community Committee for International Students. English-speaking volunteers in the immediate area and around the Bay Area are matched with international graduate students, visiting scholars and their spouses. Partners meet once a week for an hour of casual conversation and cultural exchange. This year, more than 280 "internationals" registered to be matched with one of 240 volunteers. The duration of the match is one year, but according to participants, relationships span years and sometimes a lifetime. The program began 50 years ago in the Bechtel International Center.
Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), founded in 1998 by alumna Christa Gannon, focuses on reducing juvenile crime and incarceration through legal education, mentoring and leadership training. College students, law students and other interested adults volunteer to mentor at-risk and disadvantaged youth. Volunteer mentors also listen to the teenagers and help them advance to a FLY leadership program, where they are trained to pass along their knowledge to other teens in trouble. So far, San Jose-based FLY has helped nearly 10,000 youth in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
The Mural Music and Arts Project (MMAP) seeks to educate, empower and inspire youth through the arts. Over the past six years, with active community support, MMAP has achieved its original goal of employing teens to create a mural for every school in East Palo Alto's Ravenswood City School District and now offers year-round youth development through several programs in the communities of East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City. MMAP, based in East Palo Alto, has served more than 350 youth. Collectively, they have created 26 murals, produced one CD and written, recorded and performed six original songs.
Also at the luncheon, Professors Terry Karl and James Patell were presented with the Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize, which had been previously announced.
