Donna Palomba is the president and founder of Jane Doe No More, a nonprofit in Waterbury, Conn., that helps victims of sexual assault.
She's also one of two recipients of the Connecticut Community Foundation's Trustee Fund's " Excellence in Collaboration and Innovation in Greater Waterbury and the Litchfield Hills" award, which handed out $5,000 each to the groups last week.
The UnGroup Society was recognized as a "forward-thinking community action network that develops, promotes, and supports collaboration and unity for all residents of the City of Waterbury and beyond."
The group's initiatives include a program that provides financial education to students, as well as an outreach team that provides age-appropriate education in schools.
The Survivors Speak program, meanwhile, "empowers survivors of sexual crimes to share their stories through specialized professional training in public speaking and team building, allowing them to advance their own healing while helping to educate audiences of all kinds," the foundation said in a statement.
Palomba tells the Hartford Courant that she's "thrilled" and "honored" to be one of the recipients.
"Our initiatives hope to inspire entrepreneurial students who plan to create their own businesses and opportunities to consider hiring black and brown people who look like them," she says.
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.