Purpose Prize

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The Latest from CoGenerate

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

For the past year, Ampact, with support from CoGenerate’s Generations Serving Together program, placed cogenerational pairs of AmeriCorps members in elementary schools. The older and younger adults worked side by side to improve students’ reading and math skills. A...

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

We at CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) are mourning the loss of Chuck Feeney this week. Without Chuck's vision and generosity we likely would not exist as an organization. Twenty-five years ago Atlantic Philanthropies took a chance on our start-up, playing a...

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Charlotte Holstein

FOCUS Greater Syracuse
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006

Tapping community creativity to impact change

Charlotte (Chuckie) Holstein, 80, created the nonprofit F.O.C.U.S. (Forging Our Community’s United Strength) in 1998 to engage local citizens and organizations to address the major economic, social, and environmental issues facing the Syracuse, NY region. With the vision and input of thousands of people, 87 goals were initiated, all germane to building a sustainable community. To meet the challenges facing the area, citizens prepared strategic plans of action to: 1) improve the water quality of a significantly polluted lake, 2) revitalize an economically depressed downtown area; 3) promote community preparedness for the impact on municipalities resulting from the large numbers of retiring baby boomers; and 4) create a free, 10-week “Citizens’ Academy” to encourage civic engagement and an understanding of how government works. Since then, the plans have begun to be implemented, improvements are underway, and civic engagement has significantly increased as a result. Through its work and its partnerships across the community, F.O.C.U.S. enables citizens to become increasingly involved in improving the quality of life and economic future of the area.