Clive Stafford Smith - Beacon Prize 2010

Clive Stafford Smith OBE has been awarded The Judges' Special Beacon Prize for Outstanding Philanthropic achievement, for his inspirational work as Director of the Human rights charity Reprieve.

Clive has spent 25 years working on behalf of defendants facing the death penalty in the USA. After graduating from Columbia law school in New York, he spent nine years as a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, working on death penalty cases and other civil rights issues. In 1999 Clive founded Reprieve and, the following year, he was awarded an OBE for "humanitarian services". He moved back to the UK in 2004 where he is focusing on achieving due process for the detainees being held by the US in Guantánamo Bay, as well as continuing his work on death penalty cases.

Clive is just one recipient of the 2010 Beacon Prize and joins the ranks of previous Beacon winners such as Sir Bob Geldof, Jamie Oliver and environmentalist Zac Goldsmith, who have all been recognised for their charitable work with this high honour, described by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as the 'Nobel Prize of the charity world'.
................................................................................­........................................................

About the Beacon Prize:

The Beacon Fellowship is a charitable organisation set up to encourage individual contributions to charitable and social causes and to celebrate and showcase best practice in giving. Beacon awards annual prizes to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to charitable causes or to organisations that benefit the public.

An overall winner will be selected every year, who will be given a cash award of £30,000, to be invested in an innovative way by the winner in a charity of their choice. Beacon believes that by highlighting the achievements of the prize winners and showcasing innovation and best practice in philanthropy, others will be inspired and encouraged to make their own contribution.

The wide range of nomination categories means that the Beacon Prize programme is truly unique -- it brings together a remarkable blend of individuals of different socio-economic and professional backgrounds. The fact that a grass-roots activist is as well represented as an individual who donates millions of pounds each year is in itself a great achievement, and one of the many components of a process that makes the Beacon Prize such a powerful tool for changing the culture of giving in the U.K.

Since 1st April 2009, The Beacon Fellowship Charitable Trust has been incorporated with the Community Foundation Network, a registered charity committed to developing philanthropy particularly at a local community level, representing 57 Community Foundations who last year supported 1400 significant clients who invested £70m into 20,000 philanthropic projects.

If you'd like to learn more about the Beacon Prize 2010, please visit www.beaconfellowship.org.uk


All videos produced by Plastik Digital: www.plastikdigital.com

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• law
• philanthropy
• Guantanamo
• terror
• death
• row
• execution
• reprieve
• community
• beacon
• prize
• foundation
• network
• award
• not
• for
• profit
• third
• sector