Everyday Acts of Bravery

Individual recipients receiving “pay it forward” awards

• Bridgette Sanchez-Garcia: An advocate for immigrant high school students in Atlanta, GA who helps them access advanced academic programs and provides mentorship, leaning on her and her family’s lived experience.
• Garrett Blaize: While serving in the National Guard, Garrett stepped into leadership as Executive Director of the Appalachia Community Fund—becoming the youngest executive director of a philanthropic intermediary of its size and scope in the United States. He took on this role during a period of organizational transition, helping to stabilize and reorient a legacy institution to meet a moment of regional uncertainty. After completing his military contract, he focused fully on building civic infrastructure and resilient local institutions in Central Appalachia.
• Gladys Harrison: As owner of Big Mama's Kitchen and Catering, Gladys preserves her late mother's soul food restaurant as a cultural institution in North Omaha. She honors her family's legacy while sustaining a space for storytelling, connection, and Black heritage.
• Isaac Garcia: A young Native American and Mexican community leader who, at age 11, founded the nonprofit, Isaac’s Blessing Bags, to support unhoused individuals in St. Paul, MN by providing bags filled with toiletries and other needed personal care items.
• Prabhjot (Parry) Singh: A Sikh community leader who organizes interfaith gatherings at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, the site of a 2012 mass shooting. Through his work, he has helped to transform a place of tragedy into one of healing and understanding by hosting interfaith dialogues and community meals.
• Sergeant Major Raquel Painter, USMC (Ret.): A Native American Marine Corps veteran who founded the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow in 2021 to create a space for cultural celebration and healing, bridging military and Indigenous communities.

Organizations receiving awards

• Alliance for a Better Community: The Fuerza Fund, hosted through the Alliance for a Better Community, provides rapid response assistance to families affected by the Los Angeles wildfires who were excluded from traditional aid. The fund has helped over 370 families with direct cash assistance.
• Eastern PA Trans Equity Project: EPATEP provides direct services to transgender and gender-diverse Pennsylvanians in 42 counties, including legal name changes, support groups, and basic needs. The organization was instrumental in Allentown, PA becoming an LGBTQ+ "safe haven" in April 2025.
• PICO California: As the state’s largest faith-based community organizing network, PICO California represents over 500 congregations and 650,000 Californians across 18 counties. Led by immigrants, formerly incarcerated individuals, and low-wage workers, PICO California drives systemic change through grassroots campaigns on housing, healthcare, and criminal justice reform.
• Rutland County Pride Center: The organization demonstrated solidarity by physically protecting participants during the NAACP-organized Juneteenth Strut in Rutland County, VT, ensuring Black, brown, queer, and allied community members could walk safely through their town despite facing aggression.
• Shady Oaks Camp: Founded in 1947, Shady Oaks Camp in Homer Glen, IL provides year-round programs for children and adults with disabilities, featuring 1-to-1 staff ratios and adaptive activities that promote independence, personal growth, and community inclusion.
• Upward Transitions: Established in 1925 and celebrating 100 years of service, Upward Transitions prevents evictions for families and seniors, obtains identification documents for individuals experiencing homelessness, and offers emergency relief and case management in Oklahoma City and County, OK.
• We the People Warwick: Through dialogue and storytelling, We the People Warwick addresses civic polarization in Warwick, NY, bringing together diverse community members, to take coordinated action to bridge divides and support the social and emotional wellbeing of teens.
• Yarrow Collective: Yarrow Collective in Fort Collins, CO provides peer-supported approaches to mental health services, centering recovery and harm reduction while empowering individuals to define wellness on their own terms through healing justice approaches.

• Commander William Marks, Jinny Amundson, and Janice Holmes, who joined forces to distribute banned books in Annapolis, MD, providing access to students and community members alike. The awardees chose the Anne Arundel Literary Council and the ACLU of Maryland to receive their “pay it forward” awards.
• Sarah Inama, a sixth-grade teacher from Idaho, who refused to remove a classroom sign that read “everyone is welcome here,” ultimately resigning rather than compromising on her core beliefs. Sarah chose the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights to receive the “pay it forward” award.
• Jamie Cook, Jen Gaffney, and Jonna St. Croix, who led a small New York town in support of a local immigrant family detained by ICE, organizing a public rally that helped bring the family home. The awardees chose the Northern New York Community Foundation to receive the “pay it forward” award.
• Cotton Blossom Gardens, under the leadership of Janice Lucero, is preserving Indigenous agricultural heritage and educating youth in New Mexico by providing hands-on experience with traditional agricultural practices. Janice chose the Flower Tree Permaculture Institute to revive the “pay it forward” award.

• Women of Welcome, whose leaders traveled to the California-Mexico border to offer support to asylum seekers and to allow other evangelicals the opportunity to better understand border hardships through personal exposure.
• Laundry Love, which partners with local laundromats and volunteers across the country to restore dignity through clean clothes – hosting over 300 locations nationwide supporting low-income families, students, and unhoused individuals by covering the cost of laundry.
• United Way of South Sarasota County is building a legal aid initiative to serve the community's elderly and A.L.I.C.E. (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) populations -- those who have little to no “access to justice” within the civil legal system.
• Lisa Gardner, President of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP. When individuals in apparent KKK costumes were captured on security footage in January 2025, this Eastern Washington NAACP chapter responded swiftly by alerting authorities, requesting increased security for upcoming MLK Day events, and framing the incident as a reminder of ongoing work needed in the community – reinforcing community resilience and safety while honoring a long legacy of local civil rights leadership.