POV Honors Cathy Friedman

It was 1986, when an idealistic Masters in Public Health student from Cal State Northridge, Cathy Friedman, had a project for her grant writing class. The class assignment was to create a grant, but she saw the opportunity to make a choice: write a grant for a fictional organization, or, find a place that could actually use some help. She decides to call Peace Over Violence, then known as LACAAW, and talks to the Executive Director, Patti Giggans and shares her assignment. Interested, Patti invites her to meet and discuss her proposal. Little did each of them know, that this was an audition for a staff position. Cathy was hired, and a legacy begins!
 
Cathy Friedman wrote her first grant for Peace Over Violence 32 years ago, and never looked back. Her impact reaches beyond the walls of Peace Over Violence and into the high schools where we work with Students Together Organizing Peace, the hospitals where advocates are supporting victims/survivors, communities where we bring awareness and break cycles of violence, workshops where staff attorneys educate victims about their immigrations and parental rights and in police stations where advocates and law enforcement work collaboratively.
 
We are thrilled to be honoring Cathy Friedman with the Legacy Over Violence Humanitarian Award, for the decades of service, compassion and excellence that she's dedicated to the organization and its mission, and to the volunteers and staff who are a part of this community. Not only has she written or supervised the writing of hundreds of grants, POV is what it is because of Cathy’s skills in program development and strategic planning, co-creating one of the most consequential Sexual and Domestic Violence Centers, ever. She is many things, a mother, a wife, an intellectual, a professor, a mentor and a marathon runner. And make no mistake, she’s “Cathy with a C.”