2023 CCC Celebration Breakfast
Events
October 31, 2023
7:30 am - 9:00 am
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Join us in-person for an empowering morning
Join us in-person for an empowering morning
Join us for CCC’s Annual Celebration Breakfast on Tuesday, October 31, 2023 beginning at 7:30am. This year’s breakfast will take place in-person at 583 Park Ave and will honor some outstanding advocates working to better the lives of children and families in NYC: The Bridge Project, Trudy B. Festinger, D.S.W., and the Family Homelessness Coalition Fellows. The event will also feature keynote speaker Matthew Desmond, an acclaimed author discussing his latest book, Poverty, by America. You won’t want to miss this special morning.
Keynote Speaker
Matthew Desmond
Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond was launched onto the national stage as an expert on contemporary American poverty with the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Combining years of embedded fieldwork with painstakingly gathered data, Evicted transformed our understanding of inequity and economic exploitation in America.
Desmond’s latest book, the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Poverty, by America investigates why the United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
Honoring
Vanguard Award
The Bridge Project
(accepting on behalf, Co-Founder and President, Holly Fogle)
Honoring
Eleanor Roosevelt Award
Trudy B. Festinger, D.S.W.
NYU Professor Emeritus, CCC Honorary Board Member
Honoring
Peabody Award for Community Activism
The Family Homelessness Coalition Fellows
(Lurden Corona, Rhonda Jackson, and Kadisha Davis)
Co-Chairs
- Margaret Hess Boyden
- William Gorin
- Darcey Merritt
- Jane Blair Oberle & Christian Oberle
- Nancy & David Solomon
- Heidi Stamas
Meet Our Supporters
Advocacy Visionaries
- Margaret Hess Boyden
Justice Benefactors
- Constance Christensen
- Diana & Fred Elghanayan
- Nancy & Alan N. Locker
Education Champions
- Vicki Foley
- Chris Stern Hyman
- Nancy & David Solomon
Innovation Patrons
- Ellen & Steven J. Corwin
- Susan & Ed Falk
- Lise Strickler & Mark Gallogly
- Judith A. Garson & Steven N. Rappaport
- Ricki Tigert Helfer & Michael S. Helfer
- Helen & Edward Hintz
- Marilyn & Jay Lubell
- Maryann & Robert Marston
- The Monarch Foundation
- Jane Blair Oberle & Christian Oberle
- Christine Wasserstein & Dan Rattiner
Equity Leaders
- William Gorin
- Sheila Lambert
- K. Heather McRay
- Helen Rothlein & James White
- Marcy Sandler & James Janover
- Jean A. & Raymond V.J. Schrag
- Lois Whitman
Sustainers
- Priscilla Bijur & Gerald Kane
Honoring
The Bridge Project
Accepted by Holly Fogle, Co-Founder & President
Vanguard Award
The Bridge Project, a nonprofit organization launched in June 2021 by The Monarch Foundation, is New York’s first consistent, unconditional cash allowance program which seeks to solve child poverty in New York. The program supports healthy development for babies during their first 1,000 days of life by providing their mothers with a set amount of unconditional cash on a biweekly basis for three years.
The Bridge Project currently operates in all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Rochester, and serves 850 babies and their mothers alongside numerous community-based partners and service organizations. Mothers in the program receive up to $1,000 a month for 36 months, with no conditions. A portion of the program is a randomized control trial in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research.
Trudy B. Festinger, D.S.W.
Eleanor Roosevelt Award
Trudy Festinger is a member of the CCC family by both upbringing and in her own right. Daughter to one of CCC’s founders and earliest members, Judge Justine Wise Polier (the first female Judge in New York State) and an eventual working colleague to Dr. Kenneth Clark, another founding member of CCC (a psychologist renowned for his research on children and race and contributions to Brown v Board of Education). Trudy’s personal connection to CCC is incredibly strong. Likewise, she has demonstrated an extraordinary, lifelong commitment to social justice. She has been a CCC Board Member since 2001 and has been a supporter of CCC in countless ways since 1959. In 2023, Trudy became an Honorary Director after over six decades of dedicated service.
A graduate of Oberlin College, with a master’s from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate from Columbia University School of Social Work, Trudy has devoted her academic career to researching and elevating needed reforms in child welfare and educating future social work practitioners with rigorous research skills. She has conducted studies in areas such as youths discharged from foster care, rates of adoption disruption and dissolution, post-adoption service needs, factors related to foster care reentry, and vision status of foster children, among others. She taught at NYU Silver School of Social Work for 45 years, has served on the advisory board of major child advocacy organizations in New York, and was a sought-after advisor to organizations around the country. Trudy has also received several awards for her impressive career and tireless advocacy. We are incredibly proud to honor her as such an integral thread to CCC’s life and history.
The Family Homelessness Coalition Fellows
(Lurden Corona, Rhonda Jackson, Kadisha Davis)
Samuel P. Peabody Award for Community Activism
The Family Homelessness Coalition (FHC) Fellows are individuals who have lived through the challenges of housing instability who now work within the Family Homelessness Coalition alongside partner organizations and coalition members to combat family homelessness and spread awareness of facts and solutions. These Fellows have a voice in policy matters and advocacy efforts within the coalition that provide a more holistic picture of family homelessness.
The work the fellows accomplish helps hold FHC and others involved in advocacy and partnerships better accountable to the needs of families experiencing homelessness and fosters a deeper understanding of the real experiences of these families. Together they run a podcast, Hear Our Voices, that shares stories about family homelessness in New York City as well as resources and information for families at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness. The podcast’s goal is to bring together voices and work towards bringing about change in the system addressing homelessness, including shelters.
The fellows are currently focused on expanding their ranks by building an advisory board of families with children who have direct experience in the family homelessness system to serve as a voice for impacted families both within the Family Homelessness Coalition and in the greater public discourse around homelessness in New York.
The three founding FHC Fellows that have been standing up this work are being honored for their tireless advocacy for children and families:
Rhonda Jackson worked for the MTA until 9/11 and experienced transient homelessness for the next 5 years. Now, in addition to being a Senior Fellow with FHC, Rhonda works with the New York City Fund to End Youth and Family Homelessness and the New York State Healthy Minds Healthy Kids Campaign. You can often find her raising awareness at conferences, connecting with families in shelter, and speaking to policymakers about transforming the system. She is a fierce believer in peer-to-peer advocacy and does this work for children like her grandson, so that they don’t have to go through the trauma of experiencing homelessness.
Kadisha Davis is one of the hosts of the Hear Our Voices podcast, using this platform to shine a light on the experiences of families with children in the shelter system. As someone with personal experience with housing insecurity, Kadisha knows how hard it can be to navigate accessing resources. She works to strengthen the partnership between families with lived experience and key decision makers and to ensure information and resources reach the people who need it most. Kadisha currently lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, with whom she loves to travel and explore the world.
Lurden Corona also hosts Hear Our Voices, and puts out episodes for the podcast’s Spanish-speaking audience. During her previous stay in shelter with her special needs son, she was forced to navigate many public systems and struggled to find support. Now, as an FHC Fellow, Lurden works with a team of people that have shared her experience and channels her energy into advocacy for others who are now coping with the difficulty of navigating the shelter system. Lurden lives in New Jersey with her two children, who she is raising to be good-hearted people that care about others.
