Pablo Alvarado has been named as the 2014 recipient of the Matusak Courageous Leadership Award. Pablo, an immigrant from El Salvador, is the national coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), currently a collaboration of about three dozen community-based day laborer organizations. Under his guidance, NDLON works with local governments to help establish worker centers to move job seekers into places of safety. You may learn more about Pablo at the NDLON’s website.

Larraine Matusak, former Leadership scholar at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and former director of the Kellogg National Fellowship Program created The Matusak Courageous Leadership Award to recognize and reward individuals who boldly take a risk to stand up for what is right and just; who work for the common good; who are willing to take an unpopular stand even if doing so may jeopardize their livelihood and personal life. They are willing to act authentically and speak up when silence would mean colluding with the problem, and they boldly take actions that tangibly improve the human condition.

This international award comes with a $3,000 prize which may be used to further the recipients work. The prize will be presented at the Foro 2014 (conference) in Panama City, Panama on September 4, 2014.