Nonprofit News and Comment

KUDOS

“Ray Balberan honored for lifetime helping youths.” By Jill Tucker. San Francisco Chronicle. November 14, 2011. Ray Balberan’s resume cites his 40 years of nonprofit work trying to save kids while chasing violence off the streets of San Francisco – a level of community activism reflected in more than 20 awards, certificates of appreciation, lifetime achievement awards, and as of this week, a California Peace Prize. But what his impressive work history doesn’t include are the untold hours he spent cajoling at-risk youths into school or jobs, driving around the Mission pulling teens off the streets and into pickup basketball games, or consoling families when a drive-by shooter got to them first. There is no tally of the children he saved and the few he couldn’t. Balberan retired from the daily grind of fighting the good fight with nonprofit case management in 2004, but he is still seeing the reward of a lifetime of work. The rewards come not just from the California Wellness Center and its prestigious Peace Prize, but also from watching younger generations of activists continue the work and the programs he helped create in the 1960s and ’70s through sheer will.

KUDOS

“Inspired by relatives, he’s doing a world of good for refugees.” By Marissa Lang. Boston Globe. June 7, 2010. Sasha Chanoff remembers growing up among relatives still traumatized by war and political persecution of decades past. He recalls stories of family members who fled the oppression of Jews in Russia in the early 1900s for the safety of the United States. Many of his relatives died in the Holocaust half a century later. The 39-year-old Chanoff, who grew up in Marlborough, has spent the past decade rescuing recent victims of the world’s deadliest persecutions. Today, his work is being acknowledged with the 2010 Charles Bronfman Prize, a $100,000 award given annually to young Jewish humanitarian leaders. In just five years, he says, his Cambridge-based nonprofit, Mapendo International, has helped evacuate more than 10,000 refugees from Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. For six years, only one Bronfman prize, named after Canadian businessman and philanthropist Charles Bronfman, was awarded per year. This year, for the first time, two awards were given, one to Chanoff and one to Jared Genser, founder and president of Freedom Now. Crystal Noble, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the judges saw this as a chance to advance a broader human rights agenda. Chanoff said he will use part of the $100,000 to find and evacuate women and girls in war-torn African nations.

KUDOS

“Do Something Awards Announces Nominees: Five Young People Who Have Started Nonprofits.” Huffington Post. May 28, 2010. At a star-studded ceremony in New York City’s Apollo Theater on Tuesday, DoSomething.org announced the five nominees for the annual Do Something Awards. The awards recognize youth who have made an extraordinary impact in their community, or a community abroad, by starting a nonprofit organization and driving change at a local level. Each of the five nominees will receive a $10,000 grant to fund their nonprofit — and the winner will receive a $100,000 grant. The awards are given based on public votes. Nominees include: Micaela Connery, a 23-year-old who started a theater company for disabled young people in Connecticut, Jacqueline Murekatete, a 25-year-old New Yorker who survived the Rwandan genocide and created a human rights group, Wilfredo Perez Jr., a 23-year-old who founded a public health program in Haiti, Jessica Posner, a 23-year-old working to erase gender inequality in the slums of Kenya, and Mark Rembert, a 25-year-old working to bring a green jobs to his struggling Ohio community.