As
an environmental activist and founder of the Sundance
independent film festival, Robert Redford has long worked to
call attention to issues he is passionate about.
There
is no greater change agent or role model than Robert Redford,
said fashion designer and philanthropist Kenneth Cole 76C,
introducing the Academy-Award-winning actor and director as
keynote speaker of the 2003 Kenneth Cole Leadership Forum. The
two-day event, held at Emory in January, focused on how businesses
can regain the public trust and partner with communities to
create social change.
Redford
said he traveled across the country from his home in Utah to
show support for the Cole Fellowship in Community Building and
Social Change, established last year with a $600,000 grant from
Cole and organized through Emorys Office of University-Community
Partnerships. This year, Cole announced that in Redfords
honor he is adding environmental and documentary components
to the program.
I
think theres some synchronicity here with what weve
done at Sundance, empowering people in new ways and giving voice
to a community, Redford said.
Cole
fellowships are designed to assist and inspire the next
generation of change agents to find ways to strengthen
inner-city neighborhoods. Through classwork, field experiences,
and site visits, the seventeen inaugural fellows took on issues
like affordable housing, women and HIV/AIDS, gentrification,
and traffic congestion and pollution. The fellows presented
their projects during the conference, highlighting solutions
they had devisedfrom creating an affordable housing database
to encouraging a neighborhood to form a walking group and publish
a newsletter.
A
new group of seventeen Emory sophomores and juniors have been
selected for the 2003 fellowship class. As the 2002 fellows
thanked Cole, who was watching their presentations from the
front row, they cautioned their successors that once youre
a Kenneth Cole fellow, youre a Kenneth Cole fellow for
life.M.J.L.
Read
a profile of Emory
senior and
Kenneth
Cole Fellow Christopher M. Richardson.