Century College Names 2017 Gender & Social Change Award Recipients

White Bear Lake, MN – Century College and the Century College Gender Studies Program will honor three recipients with its 2017 Gender & Social Change Award, formerly known as Women of Distinction. The 13^th Annual Gender & Social Change event will be held on Thursday, November 9 from 5 – 7 pm in the Lincoln Mall on the East Campus of Century College, with music provided by local musical group Wayward Creek.   

The 2017 honorees include:

Women’s Prison Book Project

Since 1994, the Women’s Prison Book Project has provided women and transgender persons in prison with free reading materials covering a wide range of topics from law and education (dictionaries, GED, etc.) to fiction, politics, history, and women’s health. They are an all-volunteer, grassroots organization. They seek to build connections with those behind the walls, and to educate those of us on the outside about the realities of prison and the justice system.

Gender Justice

Gender Justice is a nonprofit legal and policy advocacy organization devoted to addressing the causes and consequences of gender equality. They work to combat discrimination based on sex, gender, or sexual orientation. These types of discrimination harm everyone, no matter how they are perceived or self-identify.

Black Liberation Project

The Black Liberation Project is grassroots collective of Black youth in the Twin Cities working toward racial justice. BLP was co-founded by Vanessa Taylor at age 20 in direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of Michael Brown.

Gender and Social Change Award recipients have worked to embody feminist principles of social justice: to empower or increase opportunities for diverse, underrepresented groups in our community.  Central to their work is the way gender intersects with race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexuality, disability, etc. The awards recognize recipients from a variety of backgrounds and fields.  The name of the award has changed to better align with the Gender Studies Program’s emphasis on social justice and to enable us to recognize a more diverse group of recipients.