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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 1999

Contact:

Julio Marcial, TCWF (800) 475-7215

THREE CALIFORNIANS EACH TO RECEIVE $25,000 PEACE PRIZE FOR VIOLENCE PREVENTION

Rubén Lizardo, Clara Luz Navarro and Gilbert Sanchez are honored with leadership award for grassroots activism

Los Angeles - Celebrating the courage and perseverance of three of California’s most dedicated violence prevention advocates, The California Wellness Foundation will present its seventh annual Peace Prize awards at a ceremony on Friday, December 3. The winners are Rubén Lizardo and Gilbert Sanchez, both of Los Angeles, and Clara Luz Navarro of San Francisco. Each will receive $25,000. 

“These local leaders are ahead of their time in recognizing that violence is a public health problem that is often preventable,” said Gary L. Yates, president and CEO of The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF). 

Each of the recipients has spent many years working directly with survivors of street violence and family violence. Mr. Lizardo and Mr. Sanchez provide guidance and resources for young people whose opportunities for success have been thwarted by urban violence and poverty. Ms. Navarro helps Latina immigrants escape domestic violence by providing the support and training needed to help them escape domestic violence

“When it comes to violence prevention, safety and opportunity go hand and hand,” said Michael Balaoing, program officer of TCWF’s Violence Prevention Initiative. “The achievements of the Peace Prize recipients are a powerful antidote to misguided proposals to put more young people behind bars.”

Gilbert Sanchez is the founder and director the Gang Violence Bridging Project, based at the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles. With individual counseling, social support, tutoring and mentoring, the Gang Violence Bridging Project translates research findings about the causes of gang participation into programs that help young people redefine themselves. 

“Many of these kids have grown up seeing their friends getting hurt or killed. They don’t know how to cope with the fact that they were a victim or a witness to violence,” said Mr. Sanchez. “When kids feel supported instead of judged, they begin to understand the causes of their anger and they learn to grieve. Then we expose them to different options for moving on.”

Mr. Sanchez, a former gang member, is rewarded by youth who succeed in finding new sources of identity and self-respect, and in sustaining the hope needed to reach new goals. He has motivated hundreds of gang members to get back into school. Several have made the dean’s list. 

Rubén Lizardo is the education and training director of the Community Development Technologies Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he recruits faculty, teaches courses in community organizing, and places students in internships with non-profit organizations that focus on economic development, affordable housing, and school reform. Also a board member of the grassroots Watts/Century Latino Organization, Mr. Lizardo works with students, parents and community members to promote inter-ethnic cooperation, increase public safety and police responsiveness, and develop leadership among African-American and Latino residents.

Raised in Fresno, Mr. Lizardo attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was a leader in the successful struggle to establish a Chicana & Chicano Studies Program. Mr. Lizardo discovered then that raising awareness and organizing others to press for change provided a gratifying way to fuse his values with his work life. When progress is slow and exhaustion threatens to get the best of him, Mr. Lizardo says that he reminds himself of the source of his strength and sense of purpose.

“The people I have been ‘helping’ constantly contribute to my own development,” said Lizardo. “The kids I work with struggle to organize their lives in ways that are ‘normal,’ and they’ve taught me a great deal about what it means to follow your dreams.”

Clara Luz Navarro is the co-founder of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), translated to English as United and Active Women. Ms. Navarro was trained as a nurse in her home country of El Salvador, where she worked with a team of doctors and health educators in rural conflict zones that were decimated by the civil war. After several of her co-workers were tortured and killed, Navarro fled to San Francisco in 1988. Shortly after her arrival, she was hired by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, to interview immigrant women for a study on acculturation and nutrition. In the process of talking with hundreds of women, Ms. Navarro began to understand the tremendous isolation and fear of immigrant Latinas who are abused by their husbands. 

“She may have no one to confide in,” explained Navarro. “Immigrant women fear that reporting the abuse will result in their husband’s arrest or deportation, leaving them alone and, ironically, without a means of survival.” Many also risk rejection by their families back home if they leave their husbands, she added. “To make matters worse, they don’t trust their doctors, who often misunderstand or misdiagnose the problem.” 

Created in 1989 with support from its umbrella organization, the Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, MUA was born in response to the social service needs of immigrant women identified in the groundbreaking study, Dreams Lost, Dreams Found: Undocumented Women in the Land of Opportunity. The philosophy of the organization, which now boasts more than 300 members, is grounded in consciousness-raising for personal survival and political effectiveness. After a six-month period of self-esteem workshops and leadership skill building, members begin to speak publicly about the links between private violence and public violence. In advocacy work at local, state and federal levels, the women of MUA draw upon personal experience and empirical research to convince policymakers that the safety and wellbeing of all families is linked to health care, educational opportunities, and alternatives to incarceration. One of the group’s greatest successes has been the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which allows immigrant women who have been subjected to domestic abuse to petition for permanent residency without relying upon their husbands as sponsors. 

“All of the winners share the belief that the grip of violence is overcome when people who are at risk or in trouble have access to education, emotional support, and economic opportunities,” said Yates.

The Peace Prize, a $25,000 personal grant, is awarded through the Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI), one of The California Wellness Foundation’s five grantmaking initiatives. The recipients were nominated by their peers through a confidential process. The VPI emphasizes the critical role of individual leadership and community organizing in overcoming the root causes of violence. Grantmaking activities are guided by the belief that violence must be addressed as a preventable public health problem. 

One of the largest private foundations in the state, The California Wellness Foundation has awarded 1,640 grants totaling $259.9 million in grants since 1992 in support of its mission to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education and disease prevention. 

What: Awards ceremony for TCWF Violence Prevention Initiative Peace Prize Winners
When: Friday, December 3, 1999, Reception 5:15pm, Award ceremony 6:00 pm
Where: Sierra Ballroom "B," Universal City Hilton & Towers, 555 Universal Terrace Parkway

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