Golden Brick Award Will Allow Jennifer Staple To Keep Her Focus On Preventing Blindness

By Shannon Hicks

Jennifer Staple has won a $15,000 grant from Do Something, the organization that had already awarded a $10,000 grant to her organization, Unite For Sight, earlier this year. The awards — the smaller one is a Brick Award, and the larger is a Golden Brick Award — will help the Newtown resident continue to help prevent blindness through the work of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization she formed nearly seven years ago while a student at Yale University.

The Newtown native is the founder, CEO, and president of Unite For Sight, which addresses preventable blindness. Unite For Sight (UFS) has already helped more than 400,000 people in 25 countries since being formed in Ms Staple’s dorm room in 2000 while she was studying at Yale.

Now Ms Staple — who is continuing her studies on the West Coast (she is now a second year medical student at Stanford, having finished her undergraduate studies at Yale in May 2003) — is getting ready to help more people with the additional funds she has been awarded.

Brick Awards honor young leaders who identify a problem in their community and then “got up off the couch and did something about it,” say organizers at Do Something, the group that gives out the awards. Brick Awards were first presented in 1988, and CNN quickly dubbed them “the Oscars of Youth Service.”

This year, 12 young adults from across North America had been given Brick Awards. There were three winners in each category: Education and Environment, Global Impact, Health, and Community Building. Ms Staple had been honored in the Health division.

To compete for a Golden Brick Award, each Brick Award winner was given the opportunity to solicit votes from friends, family, and anyone interested in their organization through an online voting system that had been set up through Yahoo!, with a voting deadline of April 9. Ms Staple, along with 11 other Brick Award winners, knew of their $10,000 grants going into an awards ceremony held in New York City on April 10. The Golden Brick Award results were announced at the end of the awards ceremony on April 10, although the ceremony — and their results — were not broadcast until April 12 on The CW Network.

Country singer Leann Rimes was the host of this year’s ceremony. The event included introductions of each of the 12 Brick Award winners, and the presentation of their actual Brick Award — a framed brick trophy.

“April 10 was an amazing evening at the Brick Awards,” Ms Staple said. “I met Leann Rimes, Susan Sarandon, Petra Nemcova, and also spent time with the other incredible award winners.”

“The $25,000 award will be providing eye care for our partner communities in Ghana,” said Ms Staple. “Each surgery costs $50 on average, so the award will help to sponsor 500 sight-restoring surgeries for patients in rural villages and at a refugee camp in Ghana.

“The award,” she continued, “will allow us to reach many more patients who are living in extreme poverty in interior rural villages.”

In addition to the grant money came another unexpected opportunity: Doritos and The Brick Awards announced in April that Ms Staple and Unite For Sight will be featured on bags of Doritos starting in this month.

“The new Doritos packaging, which will be available nationally in May, will feature a photograph and profile of each Brick Award winner and finalist,” said Ms Staple. “The Doritos brand announced that it will recognize Brick Award-winning inspirational individuals by sharing their stories with millions on bags of Doritos tortilla chips.”

“We know young people today want to make a difference in the world, and they have a voice to be heard,” Ann Mukherjee, vice president-marketing, Frito-Lay, said in a press release. “Doritos recognizes that this voice is only as loud as the stage they are given and that’s why Doritos is providing these inspirational young people with a creative outlet to share their stories.”

“It doesn’t matter how rich or famous you are, the only way to get your mug on a bag of Doritos tortilla chips is do something amazing,” said Nancy Lublin, the CEO of The Brick Awards. “These kids rock. They are like do-good Olympians.”