Press release from the Jackson County Branch of the NAACP:
Enrique Gomez, president of the Jackson County Branch of the NAACP, announced the finalists for the 2017 NAACP Humanitarian Awards.
In the individual category, they are: Edda Bennett from Franklin, Ruth McConnell from Webster, Dr. David Trigg from Whittier, Marsha Crites from Sylva and Dr. Ron Fisher, also from Sylva.
The finalists in the organization category are: The Boys and Girls Club of the Plateau, the Manna Food Bank, the Clean Slate Coalition and St. John’s Episcopal Church Garden Ministry.
Highlighting service in Western North Carolina, the Jackson County’s NAACP Branch selects Humanitarian Award winners every two years. “We solicit nominations throughout our service area of Western North Carolina. Afterwards, finalists are picked from the pool of nominations that we received. Five individuals and three organizations are designated as finalists. This year, we thought that there were four extremely strong and unique nominations for the organization award; so, we added an additional finalist in that category,” Gomez noted.
The branch will recognize all finalists and announce the winners at a ceremony and reception on Oct. 14 in the Family Resource Center’s public room in Webster. “It’s a free event, the public is invited and there will be light refreshments,” Gomez said. The event begins at 4 p.m.
Winners of the initial 2015 NAACP Humanitarian Awards were the Community Table of Sylva and Veronica Nicholas. “However,” Gomez emphasized, “the real winners have been citizens in our region, because of the many people who volunteer and do good work here.”
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