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April 15, 2008 Kravis Prize Recognizes African Educators By AMANDA
GORDON, Out & About Leveraged buyout master Henry Kravis, a founder of
Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Company, was a long way from his Tulsa, Okla.
roots on Thursday when he stood in front of the Temple of Dendur at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (where he is a trustee). He was there to award
the $250,000 Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership to the Forum for African
Women Educationalists, based in Nairobi, Kenya, which educates girls and
women in 33 African countries.
In fact, Mr. Kravis was perfectly at home, in part because of the presence
of his worldly Canadian wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, an economist with the
Hudson Institute. Early in her career, she told The New York Sun, she
traveled throughout Africa organizing a conference of Francophone nations
for the prime minister of Canada. She is the more involved spouse in the
prize, serving as the chairwoman of the prize's selection committee.
Yet Mr. Kravis and the prize recipients had no trouble finding common ground
themselves, since the tools and language of Mr. Kravis's world, the world of
business, have been adopted by the nonprofit sector, not only here at home,
but also internationally.
"What we look for is impact, leverage, and output," Mr. Kravis said in
describing criteria for the prize's selection.
In her acceptance remarks, a founder of FAWE (fawe.org) and its current
chairwoman, Simone de Comarmond, delivered, citing a powerful statistic: The
average school dropout rate in African countries is 29%; in FAWE countries,
it is 9%. She also quantified the organization's output: In its 27 years,
FAWE has educated 80,000 girls. And she anecdotally demonstrated its
leverage: A girl too poor to enroll in school, given a scholarship by FAWE,
is now on the path to becoming a doctor. Another girl was saved from a
forced marriage at the age of 13.
Speaking to 150 civic and business leaders, including Lee Bollinger, Donald
and Catherine Marron, and First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris, Ms. De
Comarmond also described FAWE's strategy, which sounds similar to innovative
educational initiatives at work in America. It includes public policy
advocacy, gender responsiveness pedagogy, technical assistance, and
scholarship programs. Given the obstacles in the countries FAWE works in —
conflict, violence, poverty — the progress FAWE has made is, indeed,
formidable.
Mr. Kravis is himself a formidable presence on nonprofit boards in New York,
but the prize is administered by Mr. Kravis's alma mater, Claremont McKenna
College, in Claremont, Calif., where he also has a leadership institute
named after him. First awarded in 2006 to Roy Prosterman for his
international work securing land rights for an estimated 400 million rural
poor, the annual prize is one way the college is working to increase student
awareness and preparation for leadership roles in the nonprofit sector.
(Traditionally it has emphasized leadership in government and business.) U2
band-leader-turned-philanthropist Bono has come to speak on campus, and
students are encouraged to pursue summer internships in the nonprofit
sector.
The president of Claremont McKenna, Pamela Gann, said preparing students for
the nonprofit sector is in line with the college's historic mission: to
provide an education "tied to the world of action" that is "grounded in the
market economy, with respect for democracy and liberty." She noted that
these are the sentiments expressed in the college's motto, Crescit cum
commercio civitas, or, "Civilization prospers with commerce."
agordon@nysun.com |
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