Friendships are finally getting their due. Once relegated to a distant third position after life partners and children, a spate of new books are spotlighting the importance of friends. And research shows that people with close friends are healthier – both emotionally...
Purpose Prize
The Latest from CoGenerate
An Intergenerational Approach to Getting Families Housed in Santa Barbara
Lyiam Galo is the co-director of Generations United for Service, a program of the Northern Santa Barbara County United Way and one of 10 awardees of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity. Watch for interviews with all 10 of these innovators bringing...
Utilizing Faith-Owned Land to Strengthen Intergenerational Community in Seattle
E.N. West is the co-founder and lead organizer of the Faith Land Initiative of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, one of 10 awardees of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity. Watch for interviews with all 10 of these innovators bringing older and...
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Chet Safian
(1934 – 2013)
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006
Mobilizing alumni, students, and others to provide civic leadership
Chet Safian helped establish Princeton Project 55 in 1989 to engage the university’s alumni 55 and older in mobilizing alumni, students and others to address critical issues affecting the public interest. Active in the financial services industry, Safian had a personal reason to become deeply involved in civic work. Two years earlier, his 21-year old nephew had been murdered by a disadvantaged young man from an immigrant community. In Princeton Project 55, Safian found a channel for his grief and anger, recognizing that each of us has the responsibility to create safer, better and healthier communities. PP55 has many programs, but its main focus is a civic leadership initiative which places recent graduates as fellows in yearlong paid positions at nonprofit agencies nationwide. Nearly 1,300 placements (one-third of them through Safian) have been made since the program debuted, making it the largest single source of jobs on campus. More than 10 percent of the graduating class in 2006 applied for those fellowships. In 1999, Safian started The Alumni Network to develop similar alumni organizations at colleges across the country. This growing network of 29 affiliates has placed more than 500 students in 2006 in nonprofit jobs in the United States, Asia, Africa and Latin America; provides mentors to hundreds of underserved inner-city school children; and operates 18 public interest law centers.