Original Source: Valley Morning Star
By Steve Clark
Officials with the United Way of Southern Cameron County were in Vancouver, Canada, on Wednesday to receive the United Way Worldwide Common Good Award at United Way Worldwide’s annual Community Leaders Conference.
Each year, the award recognizes specific United Way chapters from nearly 1,800 communities in more than 40 countries and territories that best exemplify the organization’s goal of building stronger communities, especially when it comes to education, household income and health.
This year, United Way Worldwide focused its awards on three areas: “Program Solution,” “Issue Initiative” and “Community solution.” Honorees were judged on the effectiveness of their programs and their ability to foster meaningful change.
UWSCC was tapped in the Community Solution category, which recognizes multi-sector efforts to identify and provide solutions for underlying community issues. UWSCC works with a number of stakeholders in southern Cameron County to make families more financially stable and offer an alternative to payday and auto-title lending.
Among the stakeholder partnership’s major accomplishments are convincing the Brownsville City Commission to adopt an ordinance regulating auto-title and payday lenders, and creating an alternative to such loans through the Rio Grande Valley Multibank’s RGV Community Loan Center , developed and administered by the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville .
Traci Wickett, UWSCC’s president and CEO, said her organization feels honored to be one of three United Ways in the world to receive a Common Good Award this year.