The James Irvine Foundation recently awarded $200,000 to five individuals, representing four organizations, for being innovative leaders who provided break-through solutions to improve California’s future.
Kid CAT will highlight two of the individuals who we believe represent the core mission of our values: inspiring humanity through education, mentorships and restorative practices.
One of the recipients is Sandra Gutierrez, founder and national director of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors. The other is Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley.
The first organization seeks to bridge a gap in the education of low-income Latino children. It creates a curriculum using the help of parents to teach goal-setting, positive discipline, and health and wellness.
The hope is to improve parents’ ability to support their children’s early development by being their first teacher and advocate, the leadership awards brochure explained.
The lessons begin with parents sharing stories and role-playing with the children and teachers.
The curriculum is highly accessible, and reportedly is one of the most-requested programs offered through Head Start.
The program has educated 37,000 parents in 95 cities, including Los Angeles.
A University of California at Berkeley study revealed that before the Abriendo Puertas program was offered, only 12 percent of the parents responded that they were able to prepare their children for school. After the program was offered, the number jumped to 77 percent.
“Parents make a huge difference in their child’s early development through small things they can do every day like talking, singing and reading with them,” Gutierrez said. “Students and society gain when parents can be strong partners in education,” she added.
Gutierrez’s work demonstrates the value of investing in early education by bridging the network of support required to foster a child’s growth and development through education.
O’Malley was honored for the creation of Human Exploitation and Trafficking (H.E.A.T.), a watch program inspired by O’Malley’s witnessing an increase of cases of exploited children in the city of Oakland.
Her program reaches out to professionals in the criminal justice system, social services, health care, and education to help them recognize the signs of child trafficking, report possible abuse and provide effective interventions.
O’Malley’s program changed the approach law enforcement makes on this issue, treating exploited minors as victims instead of criminal offenders, the brochure said.
H.E.A.T. includes a team of prosecutors, investigators and victim advocates that together address the needs of those who have been exploited while working to ensure their exploiters are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
As of 2012, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has prosecuted 46 percent of all human trafficking cases in California.
“Her approach links exploited children to a network of social and safety services that help them escape from their traffickers, recover from physical and emotional wounds, and for some, start their lives over,” according to the awards brochure.
O’Malley said people tend to look at and judge the person most visible to them — the child on the street engaging in commercial sex — and not see the adult trafficker or purchaser behind the scenes.
“By coming together, working collaboratively and providing a comprehensive response, we will save lives, and we will be more effective at preventing child sex trafficking from happening,” O’Malley concluded.
