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2012 EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL OPPORTUNITY AWARDS
For 2012, the board of directors decided to return to the drawing method of selection used every year except 2011. To ensure highly-qualified candidates, the board appointed a review committee consisting of Lane Devereux, president; Cookie Wells, vice-president; Jane Mulholland, past writing award winner; and Marsha Solomon, past art award winner. The committee met to review all the applications shortly after the due date.
Every proposal submitted would have been an excellent use of the ECO Fund award grant. Among the submissions were proposals to do research for writing projects, construct a major exhibition piece, develop marketing campaigns to promote new books, attend a major writing conference, film a short documentary art video, and develop art work that focuses on Houston's endangered homes and Houston's neighborhoods. It would have been difficult to choose among these outstanding projects.
Fortunately, the committee did not have to pick the winners. All qualified applications - meaning that the individual had been a dues-paying member for two years or more and that her application had been properly filled out and submitted to WiVLA - were entered into a random drawing conducted at the general meeting on April 17. The 2011 winners each drew the name for their award category.
The winners of the 2012 ECO Fund Awards are Pattie Berg, a jewelry artist, and Lane Devereux, a writer. Pattie proposed using her grant to attend a national conference in her field where she could take classes from expert teachers. Lane proposed using her grant to complete her memoir manuscript for the 2013 book competition at the Mayborn Literary Non-Fiction Conference by hiring an editor.
The board of directors wishes our 2012 winners great success in completing their projects and looks forward to their presentations to the WiVLA membership in 2013.
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