7th Annual Awards Dinner Most Successful in Shriver Center History

Over 650 guests gathered in Chicago at the Seventh Annual Sargent Shriver Awards Dinner on December 1, 2005. The successful benefit for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law drew attorneys, public officials, corporate partners, and nonprofit and foundation leaders to support the Shriver Center’s antipoverty mission.

Jeffrey Sachs, who received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice for distinguished achievement in promoting the alleviation of poverty, addressed the similarities between a war on poverty in the United States and extreme poverty in the developing world. Professor Sachs, a leading economist most known for his work as director of the United Nations Millennium Project and as director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, exposed what he believed to be the greatest myth about and similarity between the work of the Shriver Center and his work in Africa.

“The notion that we’ve tried [to end poverty] and failed—that lore that has been with us for 30 years is the biggest nonsense, and the biggest impediment to action. We haven’t begun to try in either the war against poverty at home or abroad for decades, but the times, they are changing,” Sachs said. Sachs’s global work found resonance with the U.S.-based work of the Shriver Center. He received a standing ovation from the packed ballroom.

The Shriver Center also honored the documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock for an episode in his FX series 30 days in which Spurlock and his fiancée, Alex Jamison, lived the life of minimum-wage workers. Spurlock received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice for distinguished achievement in raising awareness of the plight of minimum-wage workers in the United States.

“Visionaries like Jeffrey Sachs and communicators like Morgan Spurlock have embraced our efforts because they understand the true costs of neglecting the poorest among us,” says Barbara Carney, the Shriver Center’s director of development. Supporters believe that the Shriver Center is a leader in identifying cost-effective solutions to ending poverty that will benefit society as a whole.

“The Center has really held the beacon in some very difficult times,” said Sachs in his keynote address. “We have passed through a period of profound neglect for the poorest of the poor… and through this very difficult political period, the Shriver Center has been doing the most remarkable work and the most remarkable advocacy,” he added.

The distinguished awardees at the seventh annual awards ceremony made this year’s dinner the most successful fund-raiser in the organization’s history. Sponsored by AARP, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, and CVS/pharmacy among others, the annual dinner raised 35 percent more funds than last year’s event.