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Photo by Dani Shane |
Rosenfield Prize winner Concepción Valadez (left) helps student Rocelia Albino Gomez in her literacy class at Centro Latino de Educación Popular in downtown L.A.
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Community heroes
BY Wendy soderburg
Today Staff writer
Philanthropist Ann C. Rosenfield never went to UCLA or even stepped foot on campus. But were she alive today, she certainly would have been proud of what her good works have wrought in Westwood.
That was the sentiment at a campus reception March 9, when the four UCLA faculty members who won the 2006 Ann C. Rosenfield Distinguished Community Partnership Prize — Susan B. Edel-
stein, Kevin McCardle, Michael Prelip and Concepción Valadez — were recognized by UCLA’s Center for Community Partnerships. The center bestows the annual prize, a $25,000 award split evenly between a faculty member and his/her community partner organization, to honor successful collaborations that enhance the quality of life for people in Southern California.
In Edelstein’s case, that partner is the Westside Children’s Center in Culver City, which works with Edelstein’s campus-based program, TIES (Training, Interven-
tion, Education and Services) for Adoption, to provide comprehensive services to at-risk children in Los Angeles County and their birth, foster and/or adoptive parents.
“Many [of the kids] have been moved around from foster home to foster home, and some have been abused,” said Edelstein, a lecturer in the School of Public Health. “They really need a chance. This gives them one.”
A management professor, McCardle serves on the board of St. Joseph Center (SJC), a nonprofit organization that provides social and educational services to the poor and homeless in West Los Angeles. McCardle-guided tours of SJC’s facilities in Venice often lead to more volunteer efforts and/or donations.
“I’ve probably done around 30 tours, and every time I come away feeling good about the work SJC is doing,” McCardle said.
Prelip has worked for six years with the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, which feeds about 100 homeless people every night. He admits he began the partnership with some ambivalence. “I wasn’t quite sure,” recalled the adjunct assistant professor in the School of Public Health. “So I went out there and had dinner, and it was the best meal I’d had all month.” One of his students came up with the idea for a mobile clinic, and today Prelip oversees the student-run clinic as it provides social services and basic medical care to the homeless in Hollywood.
Concepción Valadez also relies on responsible student volunteers to carry out her mission: teaching basic literacy skills to nonliterate teenagers and adults at the Centro Latino de Educación Popular in downtown Los Angeles. The education professor has evaluated and helped develop literacy programs for the center, where more than 1,500 Latino youths and adults have learned how to read and write in Spanish.
“The reading materials are all very applied,” Valadez said. “Once they finish with basic literacy, some of them go on to vocational English. And not all of them speak Spanish. Some speak indigenous languages, so that’s another kind of challenge.”
The four recipients were congratulated at the March 9 reception by master of ceremonies Linda Alvarez, anchorwoman for CBS 2 News and a member of the Center for Community Partnerships’ advisory committee; Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman; Associate Vice Chancellor for Community Partnerships Franklin D. Gilliam Jr.; Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss, who received the center’s 2006 Distinguished Community Leader Award; and David Leveton, director of the Ann C. Rosenfield Fund.
Leveton spoke fondly of Rosenfield. “She was a client of mine who was always concerned about the underdog,” he said. “Hopefully, Ann is watching. We are taking care of her funds in a way of which she would be proud.”
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