Education

A Prize for ‘Social Innovators’ Older Than 60

By Mary Ann Zehr — September 05, 2007 1 min read
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Until this week, I’d never heard of Jose-Pablo Fernandez. He’s the former director of the Mexican Institute of Houston, and he just won a $10,000 Purpose Prize for his creation of a program to teach computer courses in Spanish to parents at the same schools their children attend. The program, which also encourages parents to get involved in their children’s education, is now offered in 110 schools and community centers in Houston, San Antonio, and Beaumont, Texas.

The Purpose Prize is given to people in their “second half of life working on critical social issues,” according to a press release naming the prize winners. Mr. Fernandez is one of ten $10,000 prize winners. The giver of the prize, Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based think tank founded by social entrepreneurs John W. Gardner and Marc Freedman, also named five $100,000 prize winners who were determined to be “social innovators.”

I’ve promised to tell you about innovations in this blog, so I take this opportunity to draw your attention to what Civic Ventures considers to be social innovation--the CCA Alliance program designed by Mr. Fernandez.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.