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 Recipients of the "Award for Creative and Effective Institutions," announced Thursday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, receive a check for up to $500,000
-- a major windfall for the groups that all have annual budgets of less than $2.5 million.
"It's terrific, it's very exciting," said Suzanne Wagner, a research director at the Chicago-based Project Match. "For us, the award is an affirmation of MacArthur's faith in the directions we've been moving all these years."
Another winner is the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, whose staff of 16 promotes discussion about juvenile justice, arguing that harsh punishment of young offenders is ineffective compared to community-based alternatives.
"This is magnificent," said Robert Schwartz, the center's executive director. "These awards have always been seen as a seal of approval."
Five of the eight winners are from outside the United States, including the Kazan Human Rights Center in the Tatarstan region of Russia, which highlights the problem of police abuse; and Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montana, Tlachinollan, which lobbies for minority rights in Mexico.
"These imaginative and influential small organizations have an impact altogether disproportionate to their size," said MacArthur president Jonathan Fanton. "They are addressing problems and injustices, finding fresh solutions, and proving themselves as leaders and innovators."
This is the third year the MacArthur Foundation has given out the awards, modeled in part on the Chicago-based group's coveted "genius grants," $500,000 no-strings-attached fellowships that have gone to hundreds of people since 1981.
To qualify, applicants can't have annual budgets of more than $2.5 million and must have previously received support from the MacArthur Foundation.
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 Wagner said Project Match, which consults employment and welfare-assistance projects to help make them more efficient, said part of the award money would be go toward expanding their reach in other states, including California and New York.
It wasn't immediately clear how the Juvenile Law Center would use the award money, Schwartz said.
"But the award will not only be helpful in terms of recognition, it will enable us to be more effective as advocates, and to do better at what we already do," he said.
The other winners include the Legal Defence and Assistance Project in Lagos, Nigeria, which offers support and legal assistance to political prisoners and advocates reforming the criminal justice system; the Tany Meva Foundation in Antananarivo, Madagascar, which is that African nation's first environmental foundation; and Sangath, in Goa, India, which provides mental health services for 10- to- 24-year-olds and conducts related research.
The MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent group that has assets of nearly $7 billion. It hands out about $260 million in grants a year.
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On the Net:
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation:
http://www.macfound.org/
[Associated
Press; By MICHAEL TARM]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
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