Description
The Fairness Award honors exceptional leaders whose work and life have opened opportunity and access to poor and marginalized communities. By honoring these outstanding individuals, GFI hopes to inspire a new generation of leaders to dedicate themselves to economic justice, fairness, and equality.
Each year the Global Fairness Initiative selects two honorees, one from the grass-tops who has enabled and supported marginalized communities and one from the grassroots who has led communities in building a stronger voice and finding a place in our global community. These leaders come together on stage, with the grasstops leader presenting the Fairness Award to the grassroots leader. The ceremony celebrates both leaders and symbolizes the collaborative role they play in working toward a global greater good.
In November of 2010, the first Fairness Award brought together a diverse audience, including Washington elite from the Cabinet, Congress, and the diplomatic corps, as well as local leaders, community and NGO activists, and dignitaries from around the globe.
At the first annual Fairness Award, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Fairness Award to Ms. Ela Bhatt, Founder of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) of India, a group of 1.5 million poor women in India united in their struggle for empowerment. Together, these first honorees set a precedent for bringing together top-down opportunity and bottom-up leadership that can improve the lives of millions of working families around the globe.
The Fairness Award is a chance to be part of something truly different in DC, a ceremony full of entertainment and a celebration of what’s possible when the hand reaching down meets the one grasping up.
