Group to honor leaders working for social change

Carmen Febo-San Miguel, executive director of Taller Puertorriqueño since 1999, has been named recipient of the 2010 Paul Robeson lifetime achievement award, given annually by the Bread and Roses Community Fund to honor individuals and groups involved in social change.

Febo-San Miguel, 62, is a physician who grew up in Puerto Rico before coming to Philadelphia for her residency in family medicine at Hahnemann University Hospital. She was a board member of Taller, the Kensington-based Latino cultural organization, for 15 years before taking over as director.

At a Sept. 28 awards ceremony at the Franklin Institute, Bread and Roses also will honor several other individuals and organizations that "are making Philadelphia and the whole Delaware Valley a better place to live," Bread and Roses executive director Casey Cook said in a statement.

Scribe Video Center, based in West Philadelphia, will receive the foundation's "community empowerment" award for its work bringing together "a community of videomakers, storytellers, and activists who use electronic media for social change."

Also honored will be Phil Straus, a donor to Bread and Roses since the 1970s, a board member for the Center for Defense Information, and chairman of the board of Mother Jones magazine; Dorothy Johnson-Speight, a cofounder of Mothers in Charge, a group that works to end violence and pass anti-gun legislation; and Blanca Pacheco, an advisory board member of the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, who runs rights workshops for immigrants.

The fund will also bestow awards on Walter Lear, health-care reform advocate and gay-rights activist; Larry Frankel, a Pennsylvania ACLU lobbyist; and Jonathan Schmidt, founder of the Southeastern Pennsylvania First Suburbs Project.

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