LA-BASED HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES WINS 2020 HILTON HUMANITARIAN PRIZE
Homeboy Industries is a unique place where former gang members are able to experience healing from their violent pasts within the context of kinship. It is a place of hope where work therapy, mentorship, education, tattoo removal and many other vital re-entry services are offered so people can have a second chance at life. “We used to be worst enemies on the streets and now we’re family at Homeboys.” Edwin Ramos, Homeboy Trainee (left) and Jermaine Smith, Homeboy Navigator (right). ©Homeboy Industries
BY MARISSA MORAN
In July, the leaders of Homeboy Industries—founder Father Gregory Boyle and CEO Thomas Vozzo—received a monumental phone call. Their organization would be the 2020 recipient of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Annual Humanitarian Prize: $2.5 million of unrestricted funding, the world’s largest annual humanitarian award.
Homeboy Industries, based in Los Angeles, is the world’s largest gang intervention, rehab, and re-entry program. The nonprofit organization—which also owns and operates nine social enterprises—provides hope, training, and support to individuals, including those returning to their communities from prison and healing from trauma. Homeboy delivers wrap-around social services “rooted in a culture of kindship and tenderness” and offers employment opportunities through their social enterprises, including Homegirl Bakery, silkscreen and embroidery, and electronics recycling.
The fusion of two of the “world’s largest” stamps based in Los Angeles—the Hilton Humanitarian Prize and Homeboy Industries—serves to amplify the ability of local action to have global influence, a tenet that the Pacific Council on International Policy is dedicated to in its new strategic era. By recognizing the work undertaken to serve a specific, marginalized population primarily in East LA with a global humanitarian prize, the Hilton Foundation is pointing to the example that Homeboy sets for the rest of the world.
“This is a testament to the mission and work Father Greg has done for 32 years but also to the work done here every day,” Thomas Vozzo shared during the recent Global Homeboy Network Virtual Gathering. “Hilton wants to work with us the whole year, to talk about what happens at Homeboy and make it a dialogue throughout the year to get it out further—as a solution to problems happening in society now.”
Vozzo spoke during a two-day online conference in early August (held in person for the previous six years) that aims to connect like-minded organizations from around the country and world and share Homeboy’s philosophy, stories, and tactics to inspire and support similar work in other communities.
“What began in 1988 as a way of improving the lives of former gang members in East Los Angeles has today become a blueprint for over 400 organizations around the world, from Alabama and Idaho, to Guatemala and Scotland,” according to the Network’s webpage. This global community is a prime example of “local-to-global” connections in action.
Maggie Miller, senior director of the Hilton Humanitarian Prize at the Hilton Foundation and a Pacific Council member, shared with me the Prize Jury’s reasons for selecting Homeboy as the 2020 Prize Recipient:
“I think the Jury was moved not only by Homeboy’s program design and impact, but by the heart and soul of the organization—what the organization calls its ‘special sauce,’” Miller said. “I was on a call with Father Greg as we prepared for the announcement and he said, ‘The homies walk in, barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace...and only tenderness can scale that wall.’ That tenderness, that community of compassion that Homeboy creates, is not only sacred, but it changes lives and stops intergenerational violence in its tracks.
“There is a lesson here globally around knowing one’s enemies, and working with them to achieve change and justice.”
-Maggie Miller, senior director of the Hilton Humanitarian Prize at the Hilton Foundation and a Pacific Council member
“The Jury also saw great power in the model of Homeboy’s social enterprises,” Miller continued. “You have former enemies baking bread together. As Father Greg has said, ‘You can’t demonize people you know.’ It seems that perhaps there is a lesson here globally around knowing one’s enemies, and working with them to achieve change and justice.”
The Prize Jury is comprised of eight individuals from around the world. The 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize jury included The Right Honourable Helen Clark; Leymah Gbowee; Hawley Hilton McAuliffe; Her Majesty Queen Noor; Mark Rosenberg, M.D., M.P.P.; Zainab Salbi; Ann M. Veneman; and Dr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.
In a statement, Peter Laugharn, president and CEO of the Hilton Foundation and a Pacific Council Director, said, “The Jury’s selection of Homeboy Industries as the recipient of the 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize speaks to the power of standing with people who have been systemically marginalized, creating space for them to heal and invest in their future, with the intention of ending the socio-economic inequities that impact communities.
“A tremendous example of ground-breaking humanitarian work right here in Los Angeles, its community-led approach has spawned and supported a global network of over 300 organizations. Homeboy Industries embodies the spirit of the Prize and the work of the Foundation—focusing on equity, resilience and dignity—in an inspiring way.”
The Hilton Foundation normally hosts a Prize Ceremony in Los Angeles and is looking to go virtual this year. Those interested in their online series of discussions related to the Prize may follow the Foundation’s Twitter account @HiltonFound.
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Marissa Moran is the Chief Communications Officer at the Pacific Council.
