The Social Justice Awards Committee
Nels Armstrong ’71, Chair; Uriel Barrera-Vasquez ’98, Christine Crabb ’90, Michael Henderson GR, Sue Ann Hennessy, Katherine Johnson, Andrew Mackin ’07, Skip Sturman ’70, LynnWhite Cloud.
2009 Nominations Due August 31, 2008
Nominations may be made in any of the following three categories: the Lester B. Granger Lifetime Achievement Award, ongoing commitment, and emerging leadership. The award recipients will be selected by the MLK Celebration Committee and will be honored at an awards ceremony planned for late January, 2009. Nominations should include a short biography and any other information that highlights the candidate's commitment to social justice. Please include the nominee’s and nominator's name, phone number, e-mail, and mailing address. Nominations must be sent by August 31, 2008.
Nomination Form
Information may also be sent by email to institutional.diversity.&.equity@dartmouth.edu or
by U.S. mail to:
MLK Celebration Committee
Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity
One McNutt Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Friday, February 1
Seventh Annual MLK Social Justice Awards and Panel Discussion
5 pm, Collis Common Ground
Please join us in honoring and hearing about the lives and careers of Dartmouth community members who have enriched our world through their contributions to peace, civil rights, education, public health, environmental justice, and social justice. The ceremony will include a panel discussion with the honorees. A reception will follow the ceremony.
Related Event: Humanitarian Health Careers Panel on Thursday, January 31.
2008 Honorees
Emerging Leadership
Anne Sosin ’02
As a Dartmouth undergraduate, Anne Sosin created and ran two new community service programs. Templeton Reads provided educational enrichment and literacy assistance for the children at the Templeton Court housing project in White River Junction, Vermont. The program continues today under the name ROAR (Reach Out and Read). Sosin also generated the idea for the inaugural international service trip sponsored by Dartmouth’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity, organized the first trip, and led a group of fifteen students to Trinidad herself. She also spent time as a legal aide with Have Justice–Will Travel. In her junior year, she won a Tucker Fellowship through which she travelled to Senegal, West Africa, to research strategies for local resource mobilization and to prepare a feasibility study for the launch of a Citizen Base Initiative. Upon graduating from Dartmouth with a degree in English, Sosin worked as a community service coordinator with the Tucker Foundation, where, among other projects, she designed and ran the COMMUNiversITY advocacy training program, which focused on issues of poverty in the Upper Valley.
After leaving Hanover, Sosin moved to Haiti, where she worked with the Institute for Justice and Democracy investigating and documenting abuses of human rights and advocating on behalf of victims following the ouster of the country’s government in 2004. The first year of this work was funded by a Dartmouth Lombard Fellowship. In 2005 Sosin founded Haiti Rights Vision, which focuses on women’s rights, violence against women, health as a human right, and general human rights issues in Haiti. The organization’s grassroots program for women survivors of sexual violence was one of a select few programs chosen internationally for the UNIFEM Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women grant. In 2006 and 2007 she also worked as a consultant with Oxfam-UK conducting field research on small arms control in Haiti.
Currently, Sosin continues to serve as director of Haiti Rights Vision and is a Master of Public Health degree candidate and Sommer Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Renai S. Rodney ’99
Renai Rodney laid the foundation for her career in public service during her tenure at Dartmouth. There, she created and coordinated the Afro-American Society’s community service projects and co-chaired Dartmouth Community Services’ North Country Weekend, which brings groups of urban youth to the Upper Valley for three-day visits. Rodney also participated in the Oxbow 7th & 8th Grade Mentoring Program, advising adolescent girls on issues concerning study habits, ethics, diet, and self-esteem.
After graduating from Dartmouth with a degree in government, Rodney coordinated and launched the Tucker Foundation’s pilot internship program and partnership with the Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs of Newark, New Jersey (BGCN). During her post-graduate summer, she worked with the BGCN supervising its Dartmouth student volunteers and serving as a teaching assistant in the language arts. Rodney went on to the Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as a law review editor and worked in the Bluhm Legal Clinic representing unlawfully evicted tenants. After earning her J.D., she continued to work in the field of housing law as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Upon completing her fellowship, Rodney served as a law clerk for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In the fall of 2007, she joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, where she works investigating and prosecuting a broad range of criminal matters.
In addition to her legal pursuits, Rodney volunteers with Voices International, a non-profit organization that she co-founded. Voices International carries out its mission to promote and sustain the economic and social well-being of people of color through education, cultural awareness, and advocacy by operating a mentoring project for adolescent girls in Chicago’s Englewood community.
Ongoing Commitment
Allison Barlow ’86
Allison Barlow came to Dartmouth as a gifted lacrosse and field hockey player. During her years at the College she was named an All-American Lacrosse Player and received the Kenneth Archibald Prize for the most outstanding scholar-athlete.
After graduating with a degree in English, she worked for several years at the Children’s Hospital in Boston and as a freelance science and health writer. She then was awarded a Rotary International scholarship to earn an M.A. in Aboriginal studies, literature, and ethnography at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Returning to the United States, she served as a documentary researcher for PBS’s “Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers” and then as deputy director for public affairs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also earned a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in health promotion and adolescent health.
Since 1992, Barlow has worked for the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health in a variety of positions—as director of development and communications, director of youth and family services, director of behavioral health, and, for the last four years, deputy director of the Center. In that capacity, she has partnered with tribal communities to design and implement a suicide prevention program for at-risk Native youth; a home outreach program for Native teen mothers which serves them from pregnancy through their children’s second birthdays; and the Native Vision initiative, a youth development program for Native American children across the nation that combines mentoring from professional athletes with an emphasis on promoting health, fitness, education, and leadership skills.
Barlow’s tireless efforts have produced millions of dollars of grant funding for countless Native health projects involving issues of mental health, substance abuse, suicide prevention, depression, childcare promotion, infant mortality, family strengthening, and fitness. She regularly serves as a consultant for Native health projects. In 2006 Barlow received the Johns Hopkins MLK Award for Community Service. In addition to her work with Johns Hopkins, Barlow has served for the past twelve years—including three years as president and three as vice president—on the board of directors for The Baltimore Station, a recovery center for men who are both addicted and homeless. She and Mary Page Michel ’87 currently are co-leading a $4.4 million capital campaign to double the residential capacity of the Station. Barlow also has served on the board of the Dartmouth Alumni Association and as a board member and director of community service for the Dartmouth Alumni Club of Maryland.
Lester B. Granger ’18 Award for Lifetime Achievement
Stephen J. Atwood ’68, DMS’70
Dr. Stephen Atwood graduated from Dartmouth College in 1968 with a degree in English literature and from Dartmouth Medical School in 1970 with a Bachelor of Medical Science degree. He received his M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1972 and went on to complete his internship and residency at the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center, where he was chief resident in pediatrics and subsequently director of pediatric emergency services.
From 1978 to 1986, Atwood served as associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and as director of the Division of Medical Education, Department of Pediatrics. In that capacity, he directed the department’s internship and residency program and was the primary instructor of medical students in pediatrics. Atwood began his international public health work in 1986, when he joined CARE International in India as senior primary health care advisor and director of CARE’s new Primary Health Care Unit, a post in which he served until 1994. Through CARE, he worked closely with families in remote villages of the country as well as in urban slums.
He next worked for seven years in the UNICEF’s largest country office—the India Country Office in New Delhi—managing UNICEF’s health programs there as chief of its health section. Through this position, Atwood served an integral role in India’s massive polio eradication effort aimed at immunizing every child under age five.
In 2001, Atwood became the regional advisor for health and nutrition in the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok. In that capacity, he works with UNICEF staff in the countries of the region—including Cambodia, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pacific Island Nations, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam—to improve the impact of programs that benefit women and children with a focus on equity and children’s rights to access quality health care. He also leads strategic planning for regional initiatives to reduce maternal mortality; reduce under-nutrition in women and children; strengthen child survival interventions including neonatal care, expanded immunization programs, prevention and treatment of malaria, and control of diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections; improve water quality, water security, sanitation, and public and private hygiene; reduce maternal to child transmission of HIV/AIDS; enhance emergency preparedness and response in health and nutrition; and address economic and social causes of poor health and nutrition.
Shortly after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Atwood spent six months on mission to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, as UNICEF Indonesia’s director of emergency operations. In 2006 he served as advisor to UNICEF Timor Leste in Dili responding to the conflict in that country. Atwood has published a number of articles as well as a book for parents on children’s nutrition. In 2003 he was honored with the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award by the Alumni Association of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University.
Atwood lives in Bangkok with his wife, Carmen. His older son, Nicholas, is working in Shanghai; daughter Kelsey is a senior at Barnard College, Columbia University; and her twin brother, Thomas, is member of Dartmouth’s class of 2008.
Student Organizations
Dartmouth Ends Hunger
Accepted by Elise N.H. Braunschweig ’08, Zachary A. Kaufman ’08, Caroline N. Esser ’10, and Harshil K. Shah ’09
Dartmouth Ends Hunger (DEH) works to bring issues of world poverty to the attention of campus through interactive events. It focuses its efforts on awareness, fundraising, and advocacy in order to engage, educate, and empower students to make a difference in the world beyond Dartmouth. Recent initiatives have included:
- Lose the Shoes, a charity barefoot soccer tournament benefiting Grassroot Soccer’s HIV prevention program. The spring and fall 2007 tournaments raised enough funding to provide more than 800 African youth with the knowledge and skills they need to live HIV-free. In addition to raising funds, Lose the Shoes promotes AIDS awareness by screening documentaries and bringing in speakers.
- Make Trade Fair, a campaign to encourage Dartmouth Dining Services to incorporate more Fair Trade products, which help to ensure that workers in developing countries earn a living wage. With the success of Fair Trade bananas at Home Plate and Collis, DEH now is working to promote Fair Trade coffee and other products through a Fair Trade coffee house and other events.
- Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week and the Hunger Banquet, an interactive dinner demonstrating the world’s unequal distribution of wealth.
- Rice and Beans Dinner Discussions, which bring students and faculty together to discuss issues of global poverty. Twelve dinners have been held in the last year with discussions about such topics as sweatshops, malnutrition, and development policy.
In addition to Dartmouth’s Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award, DEH also has received the Dartmouth Inter-Community Council Social Justice Award.
Medlife (Medicine, Education, and Development for Low Income Families Everywhere)
Accepted by Nicolas G. Ellis DMS’10, Jessica Montes ’10, Matthew C. Davis ’08, and Sam D. Dow ’10
MEDLIFE works with families in poor communities to help them achieve greater freedom from the constraints of poverty, empowering them to live healthier lives. Its primary goals are to improve families’ access to medicine, education, and community development. Founded in 2005 by Nicolas Ellis DMS’10, MEDLIFE incorporates the work of faculty and students from Dartmouth and the universities of Maine, New England, and Vermont. Currently more 105 Dartmouth students volunteer for MEDLIFE.
This rapidly growing non-profit conducts several annual medical missions to rural villages in Ecuador, providing residents with needed surgeries and other medical necessities. A typical mission provides several hundred patients with general medical and dental care as well as diagnostic tests (i.e. pap smears). The Dartmouth chapter of MEDLIFE is organizing a June surgical mission to provide surgeries for some of the poorest residents of Quito, Ecuador’s capital. In addition to sending in medical teams, MEDLIFE also identifies residents in need of medical services that it cannot supply directly, then raises funds and makes arrangements for the residents to receive those services elsewhere. For example, in the village of Cebadas, MEDLIFE helped five women and children obtain heart surgery, thyroid cancer surgery, and treatment for tuberculosis.
With the help of professionals from around New England, MEDLIFE currently is making plans to establish a community health clinic in Cebadas.
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