Janine Carreiro is Winner of 2010 CCHD Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award

WASHINGTON (November 8, 2010) — Janine Carreiro, executive director of Brockton Interfaith Community (BIC) in Brockton, Massachusetts, is the recipient of the 2010 Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award, sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the anti-poverty program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). She will be honored at a reception Monday, November 15, at 5 p.m. during the bishops’ annual Fall General Assembly in Baltimore.

Carreiro, 29, is the daughter of immigrants from the Azores and a graduate of the University of Connecticut. She worked as a missioner in East Timor until she was forced to leave the country due to civil war. Since 2008, she has worked with BIC, a coalition of Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, one synagogue, one Cape Verdean Association and a Catholic college.

“Janine’s commitment to the poor has taken her around the world and deeply into her own community,” said Bishop Roger Morin of Biloxi, Mississippi, chairman of the bishops’ CCHD subcommittee. “Her commitment is rooted in her Catholic faith, and her work exemplifies what Pope Benedict calls the ‘institutional path’ of charity, something at the heart of the Church’s mission.”

In her capacity as an organizer with BIC, Carreiro brought together over 300 concerned citizens with state and local officials in May 2009 to address issues of employment and home foreclosures. In November 2009, she organized a meeting at St. Patrick’s Church in downtown Brockton between over 600 people, members of Congress and the Federal Reserve, leading to loans for unemployed homeowners and action by the Federal Reserve Boston to speed up the loan modification process for troubled homeowners.

In these and other cases, Carreiro, aided by her fluency in Portuguese and Spanish, located people within her community with little formal education and trained and supported them to stand up at public meetings and communicate their concerns to public officials. Carreiro is currently working toward a master’s degree in social work at Boston College.

The Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award honors a Catholic between the ages of 18 and 30 who demonstrates leadership in fighting poverty and injustice in the United States through community-based solutions. It is named for the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, former archbishop of Chicago and a leading voice on behalf of poor and low-income people, who understood the need to build bridges across ethnic, economic, class and age barriers.
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Editors: For more information about CCHD, visit www.usccb.org/cchd. For more information about the Bernardin Award, contact Jill Rauh at 202-541-3297.

Keywords: The Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Janine Carreiro, Bishop Roger Morin, USCCB, CCHD, reception, Brockton Interfaith Community, BIC