Center for Spirituality and Sustainability Leadership Awards to Voss and Blackmon

EDWARDSVILLE - The Center for Spirituality and Sustainability will honor Sheila Voss and the Rev. Traci Blackmon at its 15th annual Leadership Awards Dinner on Saturday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in the LeClaire Room on the N. O. Nelson Campus of Lewis and Clark Community College in Edwardsville.

The Center annually bestows awards for Spirituality Leadership and Leadership in Sustainability. These awards reflect the Center’s mission to “promote humanity’s sacred connection to the Earth and each other.”

Voss, vice president of education at the Missouri Botanical Garden, will accept the Sustainability Leadership Award. She helps engage, educate, and inspire current and future generations of citizens to transition to a more sustainable world. She leads a team of diverse professionals, including environmental science educators, early childhood specialists, curriculum developers, teen program coordinators, public engagement strategists, exhibit designers and community outreach staff based at the Garden, Shaw Nature Reserve and the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House.

Blackmon, acting executive minister of justice and witness ministries of The United Church of Christ and senior pastor of Christ The King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., will receive the Spirituality Leadership Award. Initially ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. Blackmon’s communal leadership and work in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown Jr., in Ferguson, Mo., received both national and international recognition, and earned audiences from the White House to the Carter Center to the Vatican. She was appointed to the Ferguson Commission by Governor Jay Nixon and to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships for the White House by President Barack Obama.

For reservations, contact Juli Jacobson at 618-650-3246 or juljaco@siue.edu. Tickets are $55 and partially tax deductible.

The Center for Spirituality and Sustainability is a non-profit, multi-faith home for spirituality and sustainability efforts housed in the Buckminster Fuller dome on the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville campus.

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