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Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

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Join the fight to save AmeriCorps

Join the fight to save AmeriCorps

AmeriCorps is in jeopardy.  Like so many other critical programs and services, AmeriCorps is at risk of being dismantled by DOGE, with programs shuttered and 85% of agency staff now on administrative leave.  As a result, nearly 40,000 communities across the nation may...

Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?

Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?

The problems of social isolation and loneliness have been well documented.  We know that too many Americans, particularly young adults and older ones, feel lonely too much of the time. We know how we got here – the decline in membership groups, civic and community...

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Vincent Harding
1931-2014

The Veterans of Hope Project
Purpose Prize Fellow 2008

Inspiring disaffected young people through links to veterans of social activism.

Vincent Harding, active as a religious and social historian at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, saw around him a growing epidemic of young people who felt hopeless and detached from society. In 1997, at the age of 66, he and his late wife Rosemarie founded the Veterans of Hope Project as a natural extension of their decades in spiritually-based movements for social justice. Harding saw that the work and stories of aging “veterans” of social change activism should be preserved through interviews but could also be shared with young people to inspire them to similar commitment. Starting in 2003, he recruited teens and young adults as Youth Ambassadors to interview community organizers, artists, religious and political leaders, educators, healers and visionary activists from 50 to 90 years old. In turn the young people record and express what they have learned through dance, spoken and written word, mural art, and videography. More than 200 Youth Ambassadors have formed meaningful relationships across racial, cultural, religious, economic, and generational lines through 75 valuable interviews, becoming more empowered as engaged citizen-leaders. The Youth Ambassadors model is being replicated in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. “The pressing issue driving my work and life is the need to prepare our citizens to see the great possibilities and challenges involved in consciously continuing the work that others have begun, to create the America that does not yet exist but is yearning to become.”