Marian Wright Edelman was raised to believe that it is every person should help improve the lives of others. From this upbringing and her childhood in the segregated South, she developed a personal philosophy that has guided her life: "If you don't like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it," she says. "Just do it one step at a time." From an early age, Mrs. Edelman knew that the world she wanted most to change was the world experienced by children, especially the children of the poor. A graduate of Spellman College and Yale Law School, she was the first African-American woman admitted to the Mississippi State Bar. She also worked as head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund's office in Jackson, Mississippi. Later she went to Washington, D.C., and became the lawyer to the Poor People's Campaign. She put together the Washington Research Project, where she tried to get Congress to expand child and family nutrition programs and the Head Start program. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund. Marian Wright Edelman receives the Heinz Award in the Human Condition for her dedication to protecting the rights of America's children. From her work with poor children in Mississippi in the 1960s to now, Mrs. Edelman has tried to give all children the public voice they need to be heard. Through the Children's Defense Fund, which she created over 20 years ago, Mrs. Edelman has tried to bring the plight of children to the attention of people in power .She has been an advocate for programs to improve children's lives, and for strengthening families and for community support for children. Mrs. Edelman has described America's challenge as the need "to rebuild a sense of community and hope and civility and caring and safety and morality for all our children." It is an ambitious agenda that reflects her work through the past two decades. Through CDF, Mrs. Edelman was instrumental in persuading Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care, and protect handicapped, homeless, abused and neglected children. CDF also has worked to curtail teen pregnancy, encourage immunizations of poor children for major childhood diseases, and distribute information about programs that help African-American children and preserve their families. |
||||||
