UNSUNG HEROES AND HEROINES
We’re continually inspired by individuals and groups that demonstrate leadership and enhance our communities. We feature these instrumental efforts in order to help foster connection and collaboration.
SLF Awards
Awards to honor life-changing efforts in medicine, science, education and the arts around the world. Click their name to read stories on their recent work:
Bring It Initiative
BRING IT is a city-led campaign in which 320,000 reusable S’well bottles, one for each High School student in every public and charter school in the city, will be donated and distributed so that students can “bring it” every day with the goal to displace 54 million single-use plastic bottles over a span of 12 months.
Christiaan van Woudenberg
Christiaan wrote and read Erie’s first Pride Month declaration in 2020. As a Board member of Being Better Neighbors (a local organization dedicated to community building, education, and cultural events to promote diversity and inclusivity), he helped organize Erie’s first ever Pride event held in 2022 for almost 4,000 attendees.
Dr. Jeffrey Nordella
Dr. Nordella fought and won a jury verdict for the principle that every patient deserves to have a doctor who does what is best for them, not the insurance company. Dr. Nordella has been actively working with residents who have been affected by the Aliso Canyon gas leak in Southern California.
Susannah Frame
Susannah Frame is the Chief Investigative Reporter and Reporting Coach at KING 5.
Her stories have exposed many wrongs, including the violation of treaty rights of indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, homeland security breaches, injustices faced by injured workers, civil rights violations of people with disabilities and the mismanagement of nuclear waste.
Hon. Fernando M Olguin
Magistrate Judge Fernando M. Olguin to serve as a federal district judge for the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Judge Olguin, who was nominated by President Obama on May 14, 2012, will preside over matters in Los Angeles in the Court’s Western Division.
Mr. Jean-Rene Etchegaray
Jean-René Etchegaray is the mayor of Bayonne, a quiet and refined city in the French Basque Country, 22 miles from the border. In spite of disapproval from higher powers in Paris, he says he will continue sheltering the Africans crossing the Spanish border into France as a matter of necessity and humanitarian obligation.
Friends of Justice
Friends of Justice works to break the silence, reclaim the core mission of good news to the poor and liberty to the captive, and transform the world into a common peace community. Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 39 African Americans were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent.
Judge Micaela Alvarez
Before being nominated to the bench in Texas’ Southern District by President George W. Bush in 2004, Judge Alvarez had been a social worker for the state’s Child Protective Services. She is a native of the nearby border town of Donna and, out of hundreds of federal judges around the country, one of only 29 Latinas on the federal bench.
The Clearity Foundation
Clearity Foundation strives to improve the survival and quality of life of women with ovarian cancer. We give hope to women with ovarian cancer and their families. All of Clearity’s services are provided free of charge. We believe all patients should have access to the most advanced care, personalized for them, regardless of their ability to pay.
District Attn. Jill Ravitch
Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch charged PG&E with five felonies and 28 misdemeanors Tuesday. The charges include unlawfully starting a fire which caused bodily injury, unlawfully burning inhabited structures, unlawfully causing a fire which burned forests, and various air pollution crimes, the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Dr. Kate Spradley
Dr. Kate Spradley and fellow anthropologists have been coming with their students to exhume bodies found near the US-Mexico border and extract DNA samples. With no maps or records, they dig narrow trenches guided by the memories of local gravediggers. The samples are then cross-referenced with missing person databases. Of the more than 150 remains unearthed in this cemetery, 30 have been identified.
Prof. Parveen Parmer
Thousands of individuals fleeing violence and truly horrendous economic conditions seek refuge in our borders every year. Dr. Parveen Parmar is a global health researcher who focuses on health programming and documentation of human rights abuses among populations affected by conflict and crisis in the United States and abroad.
St. Albans Shirley Football Club
St. Albans Shirley Football Club honored Sayyad Milne, a victim of the New Zealand Cristchurch shootings. "Sayyad played 12th Grade with us in 2017, where he proved himself to be not only a truly outstanding goalkeeper, but a great friend and colleague, a real team player with a fabulous attitude and a warm and friendly personality."
Ted Lieu
Representative Ted Lieu is a California Democrat and former military lawyer, joining other Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in accusing the State Department’s top lawyer and assistant secretary overseeing weapons sales of negligence on civilian deaths and of covering up the legal risks.
Elin Ersson
Elin Ersson is a volunteer with an organization that fights the forced return of Afghan asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected. On July 23rd she filmed herself in a standoff with the cabin crew of a Turkish Airlines flight at Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg to prevent the deportation of a rejected asylum seeker to Afghanistan by refusing to take her seat on the flight..
John Streur
John Streur, the chief executive of Calvert Research & Management, is trying to use his firm’s clout as an investor to pressure companies like Kroger to alter their policies on gun sales. He has been at the forefront of gun-control discourse, taking America’s gunfight to the front lines of finance.