Ann Bancroft Awards 2011

The Ann Bancroft Foundation has named four winners of its 14th annual Dream Maker Awards, who will be recognized at the spring banquet on April 28.  These individuals are recognized for inspiring courage, risk-taking, integrity, and individuality in girls or women.  The winners are Women’s Advocates, Susan McCormick Hadley, Shawnnise Watkins and Pam Borton.  Each recipient receives a $1,000 award.  Each year this event has raised proceeds in excess of $100,000, according to the Ann Bancroft Foundation.

Women’s Advocates, the first shelter in the United States for family violence victims, will receive an award for its ongoing support for girls and women.  Started in 1974, this organization provides emergency shelter and support services to women and their children in the Twin Cities area.

“In a year we serve 800 to 1000 individuals with one half of them being kids.  We especially focus on therapies for the children in hopes of changing the cycle of violence,” said Raeone Loscalzo, executive director of St. Paul Women’s Advocates.  “Eighty to eighty-five per cent of the women are low income or below.  Only fifteen per cent or less of the women return to shelters in 3 years.”

Susan McCormick Hadley created Womankind (Hotline/Crisis: 612-924-8200), the first program of its kind in the United State to provide advocacy and case management services for victims of domestic abuse in our health care system.  In the early 1980s, the medical systems were not responding to domestic violence.  Hadley saw the opportunity to engage and provide support for women through the medical system by training health care professionals to ask appropriate questions and direct women to the services that they needed. 

“Victims of domestic violence visit health care providers far more often than those not directly affected by domestic violence,” according to Hadley.  Womankind is a national model for healthcare. “I want to thank the staff at Fairview Hospital and the Woman’s Auxiliary for helping me to start this program,” said Hadley.  She is now completing her Ph.D., focusing on how the media portrays domestic abuse and the impact that messaging has on prevention, intervention and healing.  She receives an award for achievement and leadership in a woman’s category.

Shawnnise Watkins, a 16-year-old junior at Minnesota Transition Charter High School in Minneapolis, won an award for achievement and leadership in the girl’s category.  Despite having known her share of poverty, abuse, and violence, she has become a change maker in her school and community, helping inspire other young girls to do the same.  She has gone from failing grades and street fights to becoming a youth worker and planning for her college education in law or social work.  She is a junior youth counselor, completing seven community service projects leading girls in discussions about pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, ending violence and building job skills.

Pam Borton, the University of Minnesota women’s basketball coach, receives the award for support of girls and women in the individual category. She is a coach who helps student athletes succeed on and off the court by teaching players life skills beyond the fundamentals of basketball that serve them for the rest of their lives.  During Borton’s tenure at the U of M, her program had graduated 22 of 23 students.  Her players have collected the most Academic All-Big 10 honorees (51) in the conference and have posted a GPA above 3.0 in every semester she has coached, according to Gail Shore, a spokesperson for the awards program.

Ann Bancroft, a native Minnesotan, was the first woman to reach both the North and South Poles, across ice and land by dog sled and skis.  In Antarctica, she led the first all-women team from the edge of the continent to the South Pole.  In 2000-2001, Bancroft and Norwegian polar explorer Liv Arneson became the first women in history to sail and ski across Antarctica’s landmass, completing a 94-day 1,717 mile-trek.

CORRECTION 4/3/2011: “Victims of domestic violence visit health care providers far more often than those not directly affected by domestic violence,” according to Hadley.