Just weeks after Attitudinal Healing Connection won an award from SF State, Design and Industry Assistant Professor Steve Jones was honored at the Oakland nonprofit’s 25th-anniversary gala.
Jones was honored with AHC’s Super Hero Award, along with trailblazing journalist Belva Davis, Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and author and Wakan Community founder Tom Pinkson. Awardees were honored November 15 for their outstanding dedication to change and community service work.
“As a dedicated educator at San Francisco State University and at (California College of the Arts), you have filled the gaps teaching community arts classes, emphasizing ideals of service learning, civic engagement and issues of diversity,” AHC Executive Director Kokomon Clottey wrote in a letter to Jones. “As a creative warrior for change you have emphasized media literacy, analysis skills, nuanced, non-stereotypical, representation of cultural vernaculars.”
In turn, AHC has won this year’s Community Partner Recognition Award from SF State’s Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. The Community Service Learning program, a unit within the institute, recognizes and honors one community partner each year for contributing to service learning on campus and in the region. The award was announced in October.
AHC has worked with Jones and his students for years, through its ArtEsteem program and assisting the agency with marketing expertise. ArtEsteem is an art and literacy program that has helped develop creative, engaged and successful youth by building knowledge and emotional, social, academic and intellectual skills. The program has reached more than 50,000 youth and adults and provided programs to about 57 schools in the East Bay. Jones and AHC staff have served as mutual inspirations and unwavering supporters since first connecting through his Community Arts Design Studio course.
“Students that work with the Attitudinal Healing Connection have an opportunity to understand what it takes to create sustainable programs in communities. They have an understanding of what it means to work hands on with young people, with families and with individuals to become empowered,” says Amana Harris, AHC associate director. “ …. This is about making a difference — not only in your own life, but also in the lives of many people that live and work and go to school in community.”