Nancy Abdul-Shakur

NANCY ABDUL-SHAKUR SELECTED BY CALIFORNIA WOMEN'S FOUNDATION FOR

2007-08 WOMEN'S POLICY INSTITUTE

Contact: 

Pamela Calvert, Director of Development and Communications

510 220 6919 c        

Nancy Abdul-Shakur, Environmental Health and Justice Manager

510 375 6311 c

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

The California Women's Foundation announced today that Nancy Abdul-Shakur had been selected for the 2007-08 class of fellows in the Women's Policy Institute. Ms. Abdul-Shakur is the environmental health and justice program manager for Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ), a youth empowerment organization based in Bayview Hunters Point.  

LEJ is the first organization to have been honored with two staffmembers selected for the Institute, now in its fifth year; Ms. Abdul-Shakur's award is particularly significant in recognizing an alumna of LEJ's youth internship program, now a rising young leader in the California environmental justice movement. LEJ's founder, Dana Lanza, was an Institute fellow in 2004-05.

 

In all, 29 women from throughout the state have been selected for the 2007-08 class of fellows, which begins with a retreat in Sacramento tomorrow. The only program of its kind in the nation, the Women's Policy Institute increases the number of community-based women leaders in California who are actively involved in shaping and implementing policies affecting the health and well-being of women and girls.

 

During the year-long program, Institute fellows work in self-selected teams to develop and implement specific policy advocacy projects of their choosing. Fellows learn the inner workings of public policy and take part in activities ranging from writing legislation to testifying at public hearings and influencing the state budget process.  A non-partisan effort, the Institute offers an environment that allows women to remain active in their local communities while they apply their new public policy advocacy skills and knowledge to specific policy projects.

Of her selection for the Institute, Ms. Abdul-Shakur says, "I will bring this knowledge back to the Bayview, working with people who don't have easy access to resources to become empowered and make change.  Policy change alone can't change people's behaviors and norms; I want to be able to work on policy with the backing of the community, based on people who are creating their own change at the same time.  The six youth interns in my environmental health and justice program at LEJ will work on the WPI policy campaigns with me and learn along with me about statewide advocacy."

 

Nancy Abdul-Shakur first came to Literacy for Environmental Justice in 1997, when she was just 14 years old, as one of LEJ's first youth interns.  She took the lead in laying the groundwork for the organization's landmark food justice programs, campaigning against the tobacco industry's marketing in local convenience stores, which are the primary source for groceries in our community.  

 

In 1999, at the age of 16, Ms. Abdul-Shakur helped organize the first national Rooted in Community Food Security Youth Conference in San Francisco.  The fruits of her early work have come to include a youth-run mobile marketstand bringing fresh affordable organic produce to the Bayview, and LEJ's Good Neighbor merchant incentives project, which was the model for statewide food justice legislation enacted this January.

 

Ms. Abdul-Shakur left LEJ in 2000 when she was displaced from her home in the Mission by the dot-com boom; she relocated to Sacramento where she joined Americorps.  She was able to return to the Bay Area in 2004 to manage LEJ's Tobacco-Free Project, working with City Hall on policy solutions to the loopholes in SF's Second Hand Smoke policy; in that capacity, she was asked to serve as co-chair of the citywide San Francisco Tobacco-Free Coalition with the Department of Public Health.  With the closure of the tobacco campaign this summer, she assumed responsibility for reinvigorating LEJ's environmental health and safety initiatives, combining research, education, community mobilization, and public policy advocacy.  

LEJ Executive Director Sudeep Rao comments, "Nancy will bring a combination of passion, integrity, creativity, single-minded dedication and acute analytical skill to her work at the Women's Policy Institute.  She has the invaluable perspective of growing up in the Bayview and an understanding of youth from that neighborhood and communities like it--how to meet them where they are and make policy understandable in terms that they will care about.  She can connect grassroots organizing to policy advocacy, and knows that neither one can stand without the other. For us, Nancy is the exemplar of what we are here to do--growing the next generation of leadership in the environmental justice movement.  Providing Nancy with the opportunity to participate in the Women's Policy Initiative not only expands her capacity for leadership to a statewide level, it has a direct impact on all the youth we are mentoring as a compelling model for what they themselves can achieve."

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Founded in 1998, Literacy for Environmental Justice addresses the ecological and health concerns of Bayview Hunters Point and the surrounding communities of southeast San Francisco.  Our mission is to foster an understanding of the principles of environmental justice and urban sustainability in our young people in order to promote the long-term health of our communities.  We define environmental justice as the right of all people to clean water, safe energy, healthy food, non-toxic homes and schools, open space, and equitable educational and employment opportunities.

The Women's Foundation of California is the only statewide public foundation that is investing in women and girls throughout California to create a more just and equitable society.  We partner with nonprofits, foundations, corporations, individual donors and policymakers to find and fund solutions that create greater opportunity and equity for the women and girls of California. Since 1979, the Foundation has awarded more than $20 million in grants and capacity building assistance to over 1,200 community-based organizations in every region of the state.