Each fall The Community Foundation
presents NOVA Awards at the Community
Stars luncheon. Given in the categories of Arts,
Civic, Environment, Education and Health and Human Services,
these awards are designed to recognize and honor some
of the outstanding nonprofit organizations in our county.
Each of the NOVA award winners is presented with a beautiful
plaque designed by local artist John Haertling, accompanied
by a $1,000 cash award.
The 2007
winners are:
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ARTS:
Boulder County Arts Alliance – “Audience
Development Initiative”
The Boulder County Arts Alliance has been providing
programs, resources, services and advocacy to
the local arts community since 1966. Recently,
the organization has partnered with 10 local cultural
organizations, representing music, theater, dance
and visual arts to look at collaborative strategies
to increase audiences for the arts. Last year
was dedicated to planning; now, in year two, the
initiative is ready for the first of its engagement
strategies. This will include organizing quarterly
roundtables for staff and leadership of local
cultural councils in order to improve communication
and create a community-wide network to disseminate
information about the arts. The Arts Alliance
is also beginning to engage some smaller arts
groups from around the county so that they, too,
can benefit from research and strategies that
are developed. The goal: to increase earned income
5 percent and help stabilize partner organizations.
www.bouldercountyarts.org
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CIVIC:
Restoring the Soul: Faith and Community Partnerships
- FOCUS
Three years ago, Restoring the Soul, identified
a service gap in Boulder County’s nonprofits:
offender re-entry mentoring. Mentoring has been
identified nationally as a best practice for reducing
recidivism, thereby reducing crime in a given
community. The two groups launched the FOCUS group
to provide such mentors. The mentors begin their
work while offenders are still incarcerated, and
then continue the relationship when the inmates
are released. The mentors work to help connect
offenders with existing services that provide
housing, child care, education and other basic
needs. Although the two-year-old program doesn’t
have numerical results yet, demand for mentors
is much higher than the number of volunteers.
Nationally, 50 percent of offenders return to
jail. Through its work, FOCUS hopes to reduce
that number locally.
www.restoringthesoul.org
and
www.volunteerconnection.net
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EDUCATION:
The Volunteer Connection, “I Have
A Dream” Foundation, YWCA of Boulder County,
Boulder County Partners, Boulder County Social Services,
and RSVP Senior Corps – “Mentors Matter”
The six groups involved in the collaborative Mentor
Matters program all share the following three important
realities: mentoring is a proven way to help keep
at-risk youth on track, people in our community
may not quite understand the needs of at-risk kids,
and it is hard to recruit and retain quality adult
mentors for the kids in their programs. These six
groups decided that their clients would be better
served if they could work towards their common goals
rather than feeling competitive with one another.
Since joining forces in 2001, the Mentors Matter
program has referred over 300 potential mentors
to the partner agencies. These mentoring relationships
have resulted in lower drop-out rates, drug and
alcohol use and truancy for the mentored kids.
www.volunteerconnection.net/MentorsMatter/index.html
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ENVIRONMENT:
Eco-Cycle – “Green Star Schools”
Eco-Cycle has been our community’s
recycling program for 30 years. In recent years,
Eco-Cycle has begun to go beyond recycling to
move towards a goal of Zero Waste. The Green Star
School program is part of this goal, helping to
teach kids best practices and have them be part
of the solution. As of last year, Eco-Cycle had
taken on 14 Green Star Schools, including 5,100
children; three new schools are signed up for
this fall. At these schools, the kids eat from
re-usable plates and containers, saying no to
Styrofoam and one-use plastic baggies. They compost
leftover food and paper towels from bathrooms,
and they recycle drink containers. The school
staff makes double-sided copies. This program
has resulted in an average reduction in school
waste of 66 percent, meaning that 2/3 of what
was going to landfills will now be recycled or
composted.
www.ecocycle.org
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HEALTH
AND HUMAN SERVICES: MESA (Moving
to End Sexual Assault) – “Prevention
Education” Sexual assault is often
considered a women’s problem, and most prevention
education programs have traditionally emphasized
how women can protect themselves. But given that
almost all sexual assaults are committed by men,
MESA has taken the position that only men can actually
stop sexual assault. With that in mind, MESA designed
a Prevention Education program that reaches out
to diverse audiences, including teens, elders, Internet
users and, of course, men. The Men’s Prevention
Education Program, following research that suggests
men listen better to other men, trains male volunteers
to conduct presentations to students in local schools
and members of community groups. The goal is to
reach out to men to reduce the prevalence of sexual
violence. The presentations focus on openness as
well as exploring, dissecting and dismantling dangerous
attitudes. One expert in the field calls MESA’s
work “wonderfully intuitive and successful,”
and calls it “quite possibly the most important
work anyone in this movement could do.”
www.movingtoendsexualassault.org
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