Caitlin Cohen wins the prestigious Huntington Public Service Award

http://www.nationalgridus.com/commitment/d4-1_award.asp
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                         

HUNTINGTON AWARD TO ASSIST BROWN UNIVERSITY GRADUATE
TO USE RADIO TO FACILITATE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND SLUM DWELLERS IN MALI

    Caitlin Lee Cohen, a recent graduate of Brown University and resident of Westminster Station, Vermont, has received a $10,000 Samuel Huntington Public Service Award to develop a series of radio programs to facilitate communications between government officials and slum dwellers in Mali. The award is named in honor of the late president and chief executive officer of the former New England Electric System, now National Grid.
    Cohen co-founded the Mali Health Organizing Project in Mali in 2005 and has lived in Mali for over a year working on that project.  She will build on that experience with a new project, also directed to Mali.  As she explains, 93% of Mali's urban population lives in slums (UN-Habitat), where residents face crippling poverty and little or no access to water, sanitation, healthcare, or education.  The root cause of this underdevelopment is the deadlock between slum residents and their government.
    Cohen will address this deadlock and bring the slum residents' voices into the public arena via radio.  Specifically, she will produce a series of interactive radio programs called Rajo Bamako: An Bee Ta Donī (Radio Bamako: It Belongs to Us Allī), which will bring government officials and citizens together to address topics such as sanitation, roadway infrastructure and safety, health and education for children, land rights, taxation and governmental accountability, and other governmental services.  The radio programs will include coverage of success stories and problems, direct interviews with officials and slum dwellers, music, call-ins, and dramatizations.  The goals of the program are to increase civility in society, improve communications between governmental officials and slum dwellers, and help citizens exercise their rights.  Following the initial series of programs, Cohen will complete a survey and seek to produce new episodes based on that experience.
    After her public service, Cohen will enter Brown University Medical School starting in the Fall of 2009 to pursue a medical degree with a specialty in infectious diseases.    
    About the Award
The Public Service Award, now in its 20th year, was created in memory of Samuel Huntington who died in 1988.  Huntington was an advocate of public service, having spent a year in Nigeria teaching science and mathematics. The award, funded
by colleagues, family and friends at National Grid, offers grants to graduating college seniors on the basis of their academic records, personal accomplishments and their proposal for a public service project anywhere in the world.
    National Grid is an international energy delivery business with principal activities in the regulated electricity and natural gas industries. In the U.S., National Grid delivers electricity and natural gas to customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Rhode Island.