We would like to congratulate our friend and colleague Laurel Rothman on receiving the Bill Bosworth Memorial Award from Mothercraft in Toronto, Ontario. Laurel deserves every bit of this award for her years of dedication in the fight for a fairer and better Canada for young children and families.
Excerpts from: Child poverty: Mothercraft honours Campaign 2000's Laurel Rothman, by Laurie Monsebraaten, Toronto Star 17 Jun 13
Social advocacy work is like exercising when you are in your 50s, says longtime child poverty activist Laurel Rothman.
"You aren't sure if it will make a difference, but you know things will get worse if you don't do it," she said with a laugh.
Rothman, 66, should know. As director of social reform for Family Service Toronto and head of Campaign 2000, a national coalition that continues to press Ottawa to live up to its 1989 promise to eradicate child poverty, Rothman has toiled in the trenches for 35 years to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families.
Mothercraft, a non-profit charity that provides child care, family support, early intervention and early childhood education training, has recognized Rothman's work with the inaugural Bill Bosworth Memorial Award. Rothman received the award Monday.
Bosworth, who worked in social housing and volunteered on the Mothercraft board, died in 2011.
Bosworth's outreach work in Toronto's shelter system in the 1980s and his rallying cry that people need housing - not hostels - to help rebuild their lives, changed the way Canadian governments view homelessness. He spearheaded innovative affordable housing for low-income single people, such as Street City, and helped integrate public housing into mixed-income neighbourhoods.
"Bill was a big-picture system thinker who always had his finger on the pulse of what real people with complex challenges needed," said Mothercraft executive director Michele Lupa.
"We felt the changes that people like Bill and Laurel are able to accomplish on behalf of all of us by doing that system work isn't often recognized and we wanted to highlight it through this award," she added.
For Bosworth's wife, Joan, the Mothercraft award is a touching tribute to a man who reveled in helping vulnerable children after spending much of his career helping older people on skid row.
"It's great that what he believed in so passionately and fought for all his life is going to be enshrined in this award," she said.
Rothman was an early advocate of child care in the city. As a member of Toronto's planning department in the early 1980s, her work with Jane Beach led to the creation of non-profit child care centres in downtown office towers. She was president of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and Skills for Change.
Her dedication to ending child poverty is also making a difference, says Canadian child care expert Martha Friendly, who nominated Rothman for the award.
"Campaign 2000 put child poverty on Canada's national political agenda and has managed to keep it there," she said.
"Laurel has been Campaign 2000's driving force, using research, policy analysis, knowledge sharing and persistence to press policy makers to address poverty and inequality," she added.
-reprinted from the Toronto Star
Additional links:
Mothercraft announces recipient of Inaugural Bill Bosworth Memorial Award, Media release 17 Jun 13
Mothercraft is pleased to announce the inaugural recipient of the Bill Bosworth Memorial Award - Laurel Rothman, 17 Jun 13