4 January, 2018Print
Grammy-Award Winning Singer, Maxwell, To Serve As Hononary Chair And Performer At Third Annual National Cares Mentoring Movement Gala, For The Love Of Our Children, On January 29 In New York City
Tamron Hall And Michael Eric Dyson To Serve As Hosts For The Evening
NEW YORK, NY, JANUARY 4, 2018 - On Monday, January 29 at the newly designed Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City, the National CARES Mentoring Movement will present its third annual For the Love of Our Children Gala which will feature a special performance by the event's Honorary Chair, Grammy Award Winner, Maxwell, and will be hosted by award-winning broadcast journalist Tamron Hall, and best-selling author and professor, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.
The National CARES Mentoring Movement - founded as Essence CARES in 2006 by Susan L. Taylor, now Editor-In-Chief Emerita of Essence magazine - is the only organization working nationally to holistically advance Black children whose lives have been disrupted by systemic under-resourcing and extreme poverty. The gala is held each year to raise critical funding needed to build the infrastructure for scaling and replicating the organization’s life-transforming initiatives across it’s 58-city CARES affiliate network. Local CARES affiliates have trained more than 140,000 mentors who serve more than 200,000 children throughout the nation. National CARES is poised to sequentially roll out its consciousness-shifting, whole-school, group-mentoring programming alive now in four states.
The 2018 National CARES gala will celebrate three honorees who continue to inspire communities and activate change through their art, their ministry and their advocacy work on behalf of people who have been harmed and marginalized. The honorees in 2018 are Emmy-winning, and Academy- and Golden Globe-nominated actress Cicely Tyson who at 93 years old is continuing to deliver bold and empowered characters across stage and screen; North Carolina-based minister and NAACP leader, Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, who led the “Moral Mondays” movement that disbanded the supermajority in North Carolina that was responsible for some of the state’s most regressive legislation in decades; and Tarana Burke, the activist and arts curator who created the ‘Me Too’ campaign in 2007 to support and heal girls and women who had experienced sexual violence. Her irrepressible work over a decade sparked today’s global movement that is empowering women to acknowledge past sexual harassment and abuse without fear or shame.
"Each day we see the powerful effects of public-private-community partnerships,” said CARES founder and CEO, Susan L. Taylor. “Our honorees are emblematic of the new world that is on the way, and they have inspired the surge of new, young activists who are pushing the nation, from the workplace college campuses and communities to stand for social change. The CARES gala is unique gathering of caring leaders—the high and the humble—.from a breadth of sectors. It’s a jamboree of believers linking arms and aims to end generational Black poverty and the injustices sustaining it—so all of America’s children, families and industries can flourish.” We are remaking ourselves. We are building America the beautiful!” Taylor concluded.
Since 2006, National CARES has recruited, trained and connected more than 200,000 caring mentors to local youth-serving programs in 58 U.S. cities from Seattle to South Florida, San Diego to Boston. Funds raised at this year’s gala will directly support these efforts and other programs, including The Rising: Elevating Education, Expectations and Self-Esteem, University for Parents and The HBCU Rising, a program that mentors middle-school children in STEM and literacy and prepares college students for career success. Support will also facilitate the continued expansion of the organization’s University for Parents, which provides holistic life-management and work development trainings for impoverished parents.
National CARES Mentoring Movement gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its sponsors for helping to make this year’s gala event possible, including Presenting Sponsors: AARP, AT&T, FedEx Corporation, Hope and Robert F. Smith Family; Gold Sponsor, Casey Family Programs; and Silver Sponsors: BET Networks/VIACOM, Campaign for Black Male Achievement, Chick-fil-A, Fannie Mae, Leslye and Darryl Fraser, KeyBank, Merck, Merrill Lynch Bank of America Corporation, Nationwide, The Prudential Foundation, Larry Satterfield and Sabir Ward.
For more information about the National CARES Mentoring Movement, please visit: www.caresmentoring.org.
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ABOUT the National CARES Mentoring Movement
The National CARES Mentoring Movement was founded in 2006 and is a pioneering community-mobilization initiative established to propel mentoring and programmatic support for impoverished Black children so that they may see, honor and claim their own innate gifts and succeed in school, careers and life. It is the only organization dedicated to holistically securing and transforming the lives of impoverished Black children nationally through culturally grounded, trauma-informed and curriculum-based group-mentoring. National CARES envisions a world in which African American children and families are deeply rooted in mutual love and the history of Black people; and where they are respected for all that their foreparents withstood and contributed to enrich the nation and the world. While National CARES focuses on African American children and mentors, we turn away no child in need, nor any qualified adult, and our programs are easily adaptable to other cultural contexts.
ABOUT THE HONOREES
Cicely Tyson is an award-winning actress, advocate, and humanitarian who is renowned for her portrayals of strong female characters on stage, screen, and television. Best known for her Emmy Award-winning performance as Jane in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ms. Tyson also was recently nominated in 2015 and 2017 for an Emmy for her recurring guest role as Ophelia, Annalise's mother (Viola Davis) in ABC's How to Get Away with Murder. Since 1996, Ms. Tyson has served as the guiding force of the Cicely L. Tyson Community School of Performing and Fine Arts. This $143 million institution of academic and creative expression in East Orange, New Jersey serves 1,200 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. This cultural icon continues to develop her art as she takes on new roles and opportunities in her efforts to enlighten the human race.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II is president of Repairers of the Breach and Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, national co-chair of the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign, and leads an alliance of more than 200 progressive organizations best known as “Moral Monday.” Moral Monday is a multi-racial, multi-faith movement fighting for voting rights, public education, universal healthcare, environmental protection, and the rights of women, labor, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community. For the past two years, Rev. Dr. Barber has led a national organizing tour called “The Revival: Time for a Moral Revolution of Values,” working alongside Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Rev. Dr. Traci Blackmon, and Sister Simone Campbell to redefine public morality and support state coalitions to address poverty, injustice, and inequality. Rev. Dr. Barber headed the North Carolina NAACP from 2006 to 2017 and serves on the NAACP National Board of Directors. He is currently organizing a Poor People’s Campaign in 2018 to mark the 50th anniversary of the one Dr. King launched but did not live to lead.
Tarana Burke has worked in social justice and Black arts and culture for over twenty years. Her long and varied professional career started in Selma, AL, and earned her a consulting position with the production of the 2014, Academy Award-nominated film, SELMA, directed by Ava DuVernay. Tarana is passionate about social justice and has made a lifelong commitment to serving the causes of people of color and marginalized groups with a particular focus on women and girls. In 2003, she turned her focus to co-founding Jendayi Aza, an African-centered Rites of Passage program for girls. That program eventually evolved into the creation of her non-profit Just Be, Inc and led her to launch the ‘me too.’ movement to inspire people to share their experiences of sexual violence and explore the trajectory of healing for girls and women are survivors of sexual abuse, assault and exploitation. She and her movement were among those recognized as TIME Magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year.