McCarthy Award for Public Service

Congrats to Reyna Brown ’19, graduate, and this year’s Awardee of the McCarthy Award for Public Service. Check out her acceptance speech given at the Center’s Year-end Celebration in this week’s blog. Reyna graduates this week with a BA in Performing Arts & Social Justice and in Peace and Justice Studies. Continue to make us proud!

Thank you so much for choosing me to be the recipient of the Leo T. McCarthy Public Service Award. While I’ve been at USF, one of my prerogatives has been to narrow down what exactly it is that I want to be doing in this world and in public service. With all the opportunities given to me by the Leo T. McCarthy Center, I can definitely say that I have narrowed down that focus to our modern-day Civil Rights Movement of Mass Incarceration.

All the work that I’ve been doing in the community, working with folk who are getting out of incarceration, working with folks that are incarcerated now and also working with young folks in the community to prevent them from steering off a track that is anything other than success and fruitfulness for their lives.

So thank you to the McCarthy Center: everyone here who has been willing to talk to me about how my day is going; to talk to me about what my future big big big BIG dreams are – helping me boil those down; but also believing in me and giving me the tools that I need to make these big dreams come true.

Read more about Reyna and Project Amplify, the summer program she created for young middle-school students, using hip-hop and as a means of personal and social truth.