Goldman Environmental Prize Winners Announced

If you need a little inspiration as end of the semester work intensifies, head on over to the Goldman Environmental Prize website, where today the 2010 winners were announced:

Thuli Brilliance Makama, Swaziland
Tuy Sereivathana, Cambodia
Małgorzata Górska, Poland
Humberto Ríos Labrada, Cuba
Lynn Henning, United States
Randall Arauz, Costa Rica

“Grassroots environmental heroes too often go unrecognized. Yet their efforts to protect the world’s natural resources are increasingly critical to the well-being of the planet we all share. Thus, in 1990 San Francisco civic leaders and philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda H. Goldman (1924-1996) created the Goldman Environmental Prize. The Goldman Prize continues today with its original mission to annually honor grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. . . . The Goldman Prize views “grassroots” leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation in the issues that affect them. Through recognizing these individual leaders, the Prize seeks to inspire other ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the natural world.” —Goldman Environmental Prize

Every year the winners remind us just how much can be accomplished by individuals committed to protecting the environment and their communities. They also remind me of folks in our own community doing great work providing psychological services to communities in disaster areas, establishing environmental studies education in Rwanda, helping small businesses develop sustainable practices, among so many others.