October 28, 2014
7:30 AM - 9:15 AM
Tickets start at $250
Event Details
Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for a very special Celebration Breakfast!
Read more about the morning and the words of our inspiring honorees and speakers on our blog.
If you were a guest at the event or were unable to join us, please consider making a contribution so that CCC can continue to be a strong, effective advocate for children.
Keynote Speaker: Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Columnist and Author
Vanguard Award: LeVar Burton and Mark Wolfe, Co-Founders, RRKidz/Reading Rainbow
Eleanor Roosevelt Award: Lois Q. Whitman, Children’s Rights Advocate
Samuel P. Peabody Award: Campaign for Children Master of Ceremonies: Juju Chang Honorary Chair: Katherine S. Lobach, M.D. Co-Chairs: Marilyn Lubell, Mahsa Pelosky, Nancy Solomon, Heidi Stamas
HONOREES AND SPEAKERS
Keynote Speaker
Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times Columnist and Author Nicholas Kristof is a two time Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist for the New York Times. Not only do Mr. Kristof’s New York Times op-ed columns regularly shine a spotlight on the needs of the most vulnerable children globally, nationally and in New York City but his new book, A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, is a unique and essential narrative about making a difference in the world and becoming a conscientious global citizen. Soon to be the basis of a PBS documentary, A Path Appears is a deep examination of people who are making the world a better place, (on issues ranging from early education to inner-city violence to disease prevention) and the myriad ways we can support them, whether with a donation, an inkling to help or a useful skill to deploy.
Vanguard Award LeVar Burton and Mark Wolfe
Co-Founders of RRKidz/Reading Rainbow Reading Rainbow was originally an Emmy-winning TV series hosted by LeVar Burton that encouraged children to read and ran on PBS from 1983 to 2006. After ending its TV run, LeVar Burton and Mark Wolfe founded RRKidz and in 2012 reinvented Reading Rainbow for a new generation of children as an iPad app, which quickly became the #1 educational app on iTunes and by 2014 surpassed 16 million books read.
Not content to stop there, Burton and Wolfe wanted Reading Rainbow to reach “all children everywhere” and in 2014 launched a fundraising campaign through the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform to make Reading Rainbow available on the web, and through Android, game consoles, smartphones, other streaming devices, and in classrooms. The effort met its $1 million goal in just eleven hours and by the end of the 35-day campaign, exceeded $5 million, becoming the most popular Kickstarter campaign ever with 105,857 backers. Among other initiatives, the $5 million raised will enable RRKidz to bring Reading Rainbow, free of charge, to over 13,000 classrooms in low-income communities.
LeVar Burton is a Co-Founder and Curator-in-Chief of RRKidz/Reading Rainbow. He is also an actor, known for the landmark TV mini-series Roots,Star Trek: The Next Generation, and for hosting Reading Rainbow. He has won 12 Emmy Awards, a Grammy and 5 NAACP awards. Mark Wolfe is a Co-Founder and CEO of RRKidz/Reading Rainbow. In over 27 years in Hollywood, he has produced or overseen production of over $1 billion in movie projects, including The Way Back, Terminator 3 and 4, I Heart Huckabees, Elizabeth, Fargo, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and The Usual Suspects, among others.
Eleanor Roosevelt Award Lois Q. Whitman
Founder of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch Lois Q. Whitman is a lawyer, social worker and advocate, who will receive CCC’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award for her pioneering worldwide work for children and families, including the founding of the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. A lifelong child advocate, Whitman became a social worker over 60 years ago, and then, at age 46, went to law school and practiced poverty law at Bedford-Stuyvesant Legal Services in Brooklyn and then at the New York City Human Rights Commission. Whitman joined Human Rights Watch in 1984, became its Deputy Director in 1990 and, in 1994, founded the Children’s Rights Division after witnessing firsthand the police abuse of children in Turkey. She later led investigations and missions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean and has written reports on abuses of children in Liberia, Northern Ireland, and Turkey.
Samuel P. Peabody Award The Campaign for Children has demonstrated how powerful a mobilized broad constituency can be in taking action for children and effectively changing the political dialogue in New York City. In 2011, the Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care and the NYC Youth Alliance collaborated to form the Campaign for Children (referred to as C4C), whose membership includes over 150 organizations. C4C’s vision is to ensure every New York City child has access to high quality, affordable early childhood education and after-school services.
Through policy reports, budget analysis, parent and provider surveys, press conferences, rallies, town hall meetings, as well as extensive media coverage, online advocacy campaigns, phones calls and non-stop meetings with government officials, the Campaign made early childhood education and after-school programs a centerpiece of the public dialogue in New York City. These efforts were successful in saving child care and after-school programming for 47,000 children (with over $100 million in resources restored annually) for three years. The Campaign also informed the policy and budgetary priorities of Mayor de Blasio’s administration and helped to secure a historic level of investment in the State budget to make full-day UPK available to all four-year-olds and after-school programs available to all middle school students here in New York City. The Campaign for Children continues to work together to advocate to build a more stable, high quality early education and after-school system that reaches all of New York City’s children and youth.
Master of Ceremonies Juju Chang Master of Ceremonies Juju Chang is an Emmy Award-winning co-anchor for ABC News “Nightline.” She also reports regularly for “Good Morning America” and “20/20.” She has covered global events and issues like the earthquake in Haiti and maternal and infant mortality in Mozambique. She received an Emmy Award for team coverage of the California wildfires and won one of her two Gracies for a 20/20 story on gender equality in the sciences. Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in California, Chang graduated with honors from Stanford University with a BA in political science and communication. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a founding board member of the Korean American Community Foundation.
