|
 |
For Immediate Release “Mother Teresa of Affordable Housing” To Provide King’s Commencement Address April 9, 2010 - Rosanne Haggerty, founder and president of Common Ground, an internationally recognized non-profit developer of solutions to homelessness, will address the Class of 2010 at King’s College Commencement exercises to be held Sunday, May 23, at Wachovia Arena. A past recipient of a “genius award” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation who has been called the “Mother Teresa of affordable housing”, Haggerty was working for Brooklyn Catholic Charities in 1990. Learning that a decayed and abandoned hotel in Times Square had failed to sell at auction, Haggerty founded the Common Ground Community. It has grown from a single building to a world-wide organization that has enabled more than 4,000 individuals to overcome homelessness. In 2009, Common Ground opened its 3,000th unit of permanent and transitional housing in New York City, Connecticut, and upstate New York. Common Ground National has helped cities as diverse as New Orleans, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, and Sydney, Australia, create local strategies to end homelessness. In addition, Common Ground operates programs designed to prevent homelessness among vulnerable individuals and groups, assists long-term homeless adults in accessing housing and helps selected tenants with job training, medical care and social services. Called by one newspaper “the Mother Teresa of affordable housing”. “Rosanne Haggerty is a very appropriate choice to be King’s Commencement speaker,” said Father Thomas O’Hara, C.S.C., president of King’s. “She has tackled one of the biggest socioeconomic problems in the United States and around the globe. She is speaking at a College that has been nationally recognized for its service efforts, including several projects to address homelessness in the Wyoming Valley. She has said publicly that she considered her education ‘an obligation, not a possession' and that is a great message for our graduates.” Haggerty will be conferred an honorary doctorate from King’s at Commencement. Also receiving honorary doctorates will be Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., Ph.D., president of The University of Scranton; Kathleen Guinan, chief executive of Crossway Community, Inc., and a leader of an effort to transform transitional housing programs, homeless shelters and domestic violence centers into communities of learning; and, Thomas Tobin, a 1951 graduate of King’s and a King’s faculty member for 58 years. Tobin’s degree will be conferred posthumously.
Rosanne Haggerty King's College is a Catholic College sponsored by the Congregation of Holy Cross. |
