President Letter

Miranda Foundation deeply appreciates the support afforded to the Solidarity Award…honoring those who bring us together. To highlight its sixth anniversary, the Award is entering a new phase in its development. During this period, the aim is to further underscore the significance of Solidarity as a contrasting principle against the atmosphere of lack of unity and polarization in the Island and the world today. The target audience of the award is also being expanded in order to reach deeper into society. The original Selection Board has grown to integrate in meaningful ways the leaders of the organizations that have received the top honor in its previous five editions. In this manner, nonprofit organizations themselves are the ones who fine-tune the criteria and requirements, and who select one of their peers to laud. Thus, 2008 is shaping up as a year of exploration, a year of wider inclusion and empowerment for community organizations whose work embodies the principles of Solidarity.

In 2008, the Award will pay special attention to the practices of Solidarity, that is to say, to the processes which promote Solidarity. The intent is to pay tribute not only to the results accomplished by nonprofit organizations, but to the means by which those results are achieved. The aim is to spotlight the processes because processes are what set the foundations for new learning, new behaviors and new attitudes. The essence of Solidarity is based in concern for the common good; collective action as means; and transcending personal interest.

The 2008 award broadens the message of solidarity to a larger audience. On the one hand, the experience of the past five years with grassroots and nonprofit community organizations has served as the basis for expanding the message to include social movements, groups and initiatives which mobilize citizens to act on issues that affect them. The awardee movement, group or initiative should model leadership in the search for solutions to social challenges by uniting separate efforts, and at the same time, have achieved positive changes or advanced causes for the common good.