Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti and Jane Leu, Founder and Executive Director of Upwardly Global, a San Francisco-based non-profit that helps legal immigrants establish professional careers in the United States, were recently named the 2006 recipients of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Awards by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Caroline Kennedy will present Garcetti and Leu with the awards at a formal ceremony on November 20, 2006 at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Kennedy Library Foundation and Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government created the New Frontier Awards to honor Americans under the age of 40 who are changing their communities - and the country - with their commitment to public service. The awards are presented annually to two exceptional individuals whose contributions in elective office, non-elective community service or advocacy demonstrate the impact and the value of public service in the spirit of John F. Kennedy.
The New Frontier Awards are named after President Kennedy's bold challenge to Americans given in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention on July 15, 1960:
We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier…a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils -- a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook -- it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security…. Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric…but I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier.
A distinguished bipartisan committee of political and community leaders selected Eric Garcetti and Jane Leu based on their contributions to the public and their embodiment of the forward-looking public idealism to which President Kennedy hoped young Americans would aspire. Past recipients of the New Frontier Awards include: Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; Kica Matos, Executive Director of JUNTA, a social service organization in New Haven, Connecticut; Louisiana State Representative Karen Carter; and Wendy Kopp, Founder and CEO of Teach for America.