The Gloria Barron National Prize for Young Heroes

The national Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes was awarded to SHARE founder, Shannon McNamara, in September 2010 for heroic service activity.  The Barron Prize honors outstanding young leaders who have made a significant positive difference to people and our planet.   This year the Barron Prize honored ten national winners. The goal of the Barron Prize is to celebrate such heroic young people—and to inspire others to do their part. Shannon has donated the $2,500 cash award to SHARE.

MyCentralJersey.com, "Basking Ridge Woman wins prize for heroes", December 25, 2010

Shannon founded Shannon’s After-School Reading Exchange (SHARE) to educate and empower girls ages 10-17 in Tanzania. She began her work two years ago as her Girl Scout Gold Award project by collecting children’s books and school supplies to take with her on a family trip to Tanzania. She arrived with 500 pounds of donated books and supplies, and with the help of her family, transformed a dilapidated school room into a library. She began a “girls only” reading program for 23 Tanzanian girls with the motto, “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”

Since then, Shannon has returned to Tanzania twice to oversee and expand her program, and has now created four libraries at four different schools. Her libraries, which combined house 23,000 books, are made available to the entire communities where they’re built. Shannon pays African teachers to stay after school and work on weekends so that girls can practice their reading “after hours.” She proudly reports enormous gains in the girls’ reading and English skills each time she visits Tanzania. Her biggest challenge has been convincing the girls’ families that time studying is well-spent, since the norm is for girls to cook and clean in their spare time. With her latest initiative, Light for Learning, Shannon recently raised $20,000 to install electricity in two libraries and solar power in another, so that girls are no longer studying in near darkness during the eight-month rainy season.

With her newest initiative, SHARE Scholars, she is raising funds to sponsor girls to attend the highly-regarded Hekima Girls' Secondary School.  “These Tanzanian girls crave and value education – something my friends and I take for granted every day,” says Shannon. “I want the girls to experience a future of opportunities, which will mean that both their dreams and mine come true.”

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/prnewswire/2010/09/22/prnewswire201009220830PR_NEWS_USPR_____NY69315.html