Press Release: Community Connections receives support from the Open Society Institute

Over $1 Million Awarded to Visionary Leaders in Criminal Justice

Adapted from http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/news/justice_20070221

Eighteen Soros Justice Fellows Selected from Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, D.C.

Press Release
February 20, 2007

Contact:

Amy Weil aweil@sorosny.org 1-212-548-0381

 

 

NEW YORK—A lawyer working to unite children in foster care with their incarcerated parents and an investigative journalist exposing how justice is dispensed in Guantanamo Bay are among this year’s Open Society Institute Soros Justice Fellows.

The 18 outstanding scholars, advocates, reporters and attorneys will receive a 12-18 month stipend to implement creative projects to assist communities that are marginalized by criminal justice policies. Fellows’ stipends range between $45,000 and $71,250, and tackle issues such as racial profiling, prison reform, immigrants’ rights, and public safety.

“The Open Society Institute is proud to support these innovative leaders who are working to create a stronger, more equitable justice system,” said Antonio Maciel, director of OSI’s U.S. Justice Fund. “The fellowship program not only complements and deepens OSI’s justice reform work, but helps to challenge and expose pervasive inequalities in America.”

The 2007 Soros Justice Fellowships, which amount to $1,075,750 in grants, support work on local, state, and national levels. The Fellows come from 10 states and the District of Columbia.

This is the tenth consecutive year that OSI has offered grants to Soros Justice Fellows—part of a wider effort to strengthen justice in the United States and around the world. Since 1997, OSI has awarded over $12 million to 234 Soros Justice Fellows whose projects have helped to ensure that the criminal justice system in America does not ignore the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized people.

The Open Society Institute over the past decade has spent almost $796 million in the U.S. to support human rights, access to justice, education, palliative care, and the inclusion of all citizens in the democratic process.

2007 Soros Justice Fellows

Ruben Austria, advocate
W. Haywood Burns Institute
Bronx, NY Ruben Austria will launch Community Connections, which will work to reduce the harmful consequences of incarcerating young people, particularly poor youth of color. The project will foster effective, cost-efficient alternatives to detention that are rooted in the communities where the young people live. Austria is the founder of BronxConnect, a community-based alternative-to-incarceration program for court-involved youth in the Bronx. Austria sits on the Regional Organizing Council of the national Community Justice Network for Youth, and on the Steering Committee of the New York City Juvenile Justice Coalition. He has been the recipient of the Mentoring Award from the National Mentoring Partnership and the Esther House Prison Ministries Award. Austria has guest lectured at Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, New York Theological Seminary, and Yale University. He is a founding member and elder of The Promised Land Church in the South Bronx, dedicated to bringing liberation to socially and economically marginalized people. In 2005 he was invited to the White House in honor of his work with young people. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cornell, and is also a graduate of Columbia’s Institute for Non-Profit Management.

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The Open Society Institute, a private operating and grantmaking foundation, is part of the network of foundations, created and funded by George Soros, and is active in more than 60 countries around the world.OSI's U.S. Programs seeks to strengthen democracy in the United States by addressing barriers to opportunity and justice, broadening public discussion about such barriers, and assisting marginalized groups to participate equally in civil society and to make their voices heard. U.S. Programs challenges over-reliance on the market by advocating appropriate government responsibility for human needs and promoting public interest and service values. U.S. Programs supports initiatives in a range of areas including access to justice for low and moderate income people; judicial independence; ending the death penalty; over-reliance on incarceration; drug policy reform; inner-city education and youth programs; fair treatment of immigrants; and reproductive health and choice.