Winston-Salem Foundation and ECHO Announce Award Recipients

By Staff

The Winston-Salem Foundation hosted its annual Community Luncheon on May 6 at Benton Convention Center, with a record-breaking crowd of 1,100 community members in attendance. The Foundation announced the recipients of the 2015 Winston-Salem Foundation Award and the 2015 ECHO Awards.

The Winston-Salem Foundation award was established in 1996 and is given to individuals who demonstrate the Foundation’s values of generosity, excellence, inclusion, and integrity along with visionary leadership in a community activity or on behalf of a community organization, particularly in the recent past. Woody Clinard won the award.  and was described as a tremendous example of a person who finds seeds of opportunity in our community and who works collaboratively with others to feed and nurture them. He is often found in the community tutoring children, getting projects started, attending teacher workshops, supporting fundraisers, and mentoring youth and adults alike.

Principal, Rusty Hall, who nominated Woody summed up Woody’s nomination best by saying, “I have found a champion for education, and an agent for change – for real change. I have found a new role model to emulate in all that I do.”

With this recognition came a $10,000 Foundation grant which Woody designated to ten organizations, including Bread for the World, El Buen Pastor Latino Community Services, CHANGE, Children of Vietnam, Forsyth Education Partnership, The Hispanic League, Interfaith Winston-Salem, Planned Parenthood of the Triad, the Augustine Project at Read WS, and the World Relief for Anti-Human Trafficking program.

The Foundation and ECHO Network jointly presented the 2015 ECHO Awards to four recipients who are creatively building social capital. Each recipient is uniquely connecting people and building trust among people in order to make the community stronger, and each winner received $1,000 to grant to a nonprofit organization of their choice.

 

The 2015 Echo Award Recipients were:

Books For Dudes is Forsyth County Public Library’s book club for men. Members are encouraged to share their own literary finds, thoughts on current events, and personal stories. They range from recent high school graduates to retirees and from the unemployed to businessmen – resulting in close, trusting relationships and bridging social capital among this diverse group of community members.

Jake Denton is “a one-person social capital machine,” who lives out his values and builds trust among many. Jake’s involvement with Habitat for Humanity of Forsyth County has ranged from being a volunteer/neighborhood organizer to currently serving as an AmeriCoprs National service member. He has built trusting relationships with his neighbors and with Habitat homeowners and volunteers from diverse race, age, class, and social circumstance. Jake demonstrates an innate ability to connect with others in an open and genuine way that has erased stereotypes while creating greater understanding in our community.

Terry Hicks is a choral music teacher by trade, but his social capital-building impact ripples through generations. For over 25 years he has encouraged students at R.J. Reynolds High School to create lasting bonds across race, class, neighborhood, religion, stereotypes, and even high school cliques, in the pursuit of making beautiful music together. Terry’s community outreach extends beyond the classroom walls through community performances. His nomination was echoed by dozens of former students, parents, teacher colleagues, and community members whose lives he has touched and whose minds he has opened.

WinstonNet provides invaluable local leadership on a broad range of issues related to technology in our community, including its work to close the “digital-divide” by ensuring that all Forsyth County residents have affordable and convenient Internet access and training opportunities in free computer labs. It has also created strong connections between local universities, community colleges, the school system, governmental agencies, and nonprofits.

 

The keynote speaker was John McKnight, co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and Professor Emeritus of Education and Social Policy at the Northwestern University Institute for Public Policy Research in Evanston, IL. His remarks focused on how the Winston-Salem community can make its neighborhoods stronger through asset-based, as opposed to deficit-based, approaches, and he also stressed the importance of returning to a village-based approach as we seek to positively impact the crucial development of our youth.

 You can watch John McKnight’s entire presentation HERE.

For more information about the awards and the luncheon, visit the Winston-Salem Foundation community luncheon website HERE.