The founding members of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, based in Huntington, are winners in the Ford Foundation’s First Leadership in a Changing World awards program.

The three are Dianne Bady, director; Janet Fout, project coordinator, and Laura Forman, a coalition organizer. They will receive$100,000 “to advance their work and an additional $30,000 to strengthen their skills for other supporting activities over the next two years,” according to a news release from The Ford Foundation.

“Bady, Fout and Forman are now well-known to the political and industrial leaders of the Ohio River Valley,” the Ford Foundation news release says. “Since forming OVEC a decade ago, they have proved a formidable force in fighting for sustainable and environmentally sound economic development in the region. Through community activism and strategic use of the media, the trio has led a successful effort to fight off new polluting businesses, including a paper mill and a toxic waste incinerator. OVEC is also pursuing its longstanding battle against mountaintop removal, which continues to threaten the state’s environmental future. At the same time, Bady, Fout and Forman have publicized information about special-interest donations to state politicians and urged reform in campaign finance laws.”

The awardees, who represent 20 organizations, were selected from 36 finalists in a pool of more than 3,000 nominations, “represent individuals and leadership teams that are getting results tackling tough social problems in communities across the United States.”
Leadership for a Changing World, launched in September 2000, is a program of the Ford Foundation in partnership with the Washington-based Advocacy Institute and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. It will recognize another 20 awardees in each of the next two years, for a total of 60.
The program has four goals: to recognize the achievements of outstanding leaders who are not well-known outside their immediate communities or fields, to provide financial and other support for their work, to conduct research that will explore how leadership is perceived, created and sustained, and to encourage a public conversation about community leadership.

L.C.W. awardees “demonstrate a kind of leadership that is particularly effective in addressing the complex social realities of contemporary communities. They include people who have skillfully built consensus and overcome divisive issues, mobilizing diverse groups, from grass roots to government, that address a range of social problems. Many have gotten results by bridging divisions of race, ethnicity, ideology, class and economic disparity,” according to the foundation

Working in teams as well as individually, this year’s awardees direct efforts that include community initiatives to combat environmental pollution and address its health affects; securing long-term care and housing for people with H.I.V./AIDS as well as raising awareness about prevention; and promoting environmentally sound economic development in depressed communities.

Among the awardees are immigrants who have organized broad coalitions to secure better working and living conditions for fellow immigrants and other low-income workers, Native Americans that have helped their tribes break through isolation and poverty to renew cultural traditions and tackle social and economic problems, and the founder of a multiethnic theater company that helps communities use theater to encourage discussions of tough local issues. Other awardees are helping female inmates improve their lives in prison, pioneering a holistic approach to the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts, and helping welfare recipients press for access to social services and job opportunities while also having a voice in policies that affect them.

This year's National Selection Committee was co-chaired by Emmett E. Carson, president and C.E.O. of the Minneapolis Foundation and Dorothy Stoneman, president of YouthBuild USA. Members included: Diana Autin, executive director of Statewide Parent Advocacy Network of New Jersey; Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the A.F.L. - CIO; David Dodson, president of MDC, Inc.; Peter Edelman, professor at Georgetown University Law School; Don Fraser, former mayor of Minneapolis; Cynthia M. LeBlanc, deputy superintendent of Hayward Unified School District; Xuan Nguyen-Sutter, executive director of the Refugee Women's Network, Inc.; Donna Russell Red Wing, “outgiving” project director at the Gill Foundation; and Makani Themba-Nixon, consultant.

As part of a two-year program, awardees will meet several times annually with their co-winners and participate in a research project, led by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University that is exploring how community leadership is developed and sustained.