LEXINGTON, Ky. — One of central Kentucky’s leading philanthropic foundations is calling on the community to submit nominations for a leadership award helping Black communities flourish. The Blue Grass Community Foundation wants your help with this year’s Grassroots Black Leadership Awards as part of its Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative.
The Grassroots Black Leadership Award will seek to celebrate three Black leaders on the frontlines of positive change in Lexington. People who qualify must address racial justice, racial equity gaps and contribute to prosperity in Lexington’s Black community.
Lisa Higgins-Hord splits her time as the University of Kentucky’s assistant vice president in the office of community engagement and the co-chair of the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative. For the third year, she’ll be looking over nominations for the Grassroots Black Leadership Award.
“We want the community to come together and decide how they want to nominate amazing and wonderful people who’ve done extraordinary things in the Black community. We’re looking for people who are change agents,” said Higgins-Hord.
Higgins-Hord continued, saying, “They’re someone who is putting a lot of passion into what they do, a lot of care. Sometimes they’re spending their own money and sometimes they’re working with many organizations but they’re really making a huge impact in the Black community and that’s exactly the type of person that we want to celebrate,” said Higgins-Hord.
The Lexington native says the idea to create the award came from seeing the social unrest of 2020. It’s also what landed her on the racial justice commission in the city and now she continues to help amplify Black voices through the award.
“And what we do is get together and we have conversations about who we are, how we can make our communities much stronger and how we’re going to be able to pour into those communities in the right ways,” said Higgins-Hord.
The 100% Black-led initiative is part of the Blue Grass Community Foundation, to date $300,000 has been awarded to local organizations and community advocates including Devine Carama, Elisha Mutayongwa, Rev. L Clark Williams, Tonya Lindsey and others.
“So many times we find people talking about things that people aren’t doing right we want to talk about what people are doing right in their communities,” said Higgins-Hord.
If successful, awardees will receive an unrestricted $5,000 recognition from the initiative. The winners of the Grassroots Black Leadership Award will be announced at a reception around the Juneteenth holiday this week.
Last year, the initiative had 70 nominations. Nominees must live in or lead programs that benefit Black communities in Lexington, are due April 14.