2005 Mr. Mark O'Connell, President, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta

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2004 Mr. Horace Sibley
Chair, Regional Commission on Homelessness    Retired Partner, King & Spalding

In November 2002, Mayor Shirley Franklin issued a call to action to re-galvanize the community's pursuit of ending homelessness. Responding to Mayor Franklin's desire to tackle homelessness head on and her request for a comprehensive approach to the issue, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta convened a commission charged with developing a workable action plan to alleviate problems associated with homelessness. With the input, support, and guidance of multiple and diverse sources, the Commission on Homelessness led the development of the Blueprint to End Homelessness in Atlanta in Ten Years.

Within the framework of a Continuum of Care, the Blueprint provides 29 strategy recommendations that constitute a coordinated and full range of services and facilities necessary to serve the complex needs of our homeless population. Over the past year, the progress in this work and moves forward through an inclusive process that facilitates understanding and addresses opportunities and so solutions from a regional perspective.

The original Commission has expanded to a Regional Commission and now includes the City of Atlanta as well as DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb, Clayton, and Douglas counties.

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2003 Mayor Shirley Franklin

In November 2001, Shirley Franklin became the 58th Mayor of Atlanta, winning in a landslide victory. Having never been an elected official, Mayor Franklin re-defined history, being elected as the city’s first woman Mayor and the first African-American woman to serve as Mayor of a major southern city.

She began her public service career in 1978 where she served as the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Mayor Maynard Jackson. Under Mayor Jackson’s leadership, she became the nation’s first woman City Manager. In 1991, Mayor Franklin joined the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Inc. (ACOG). In 1997, she formed Shirely Clarke Franklin & Associates, a management and consulting firm. In 1998, she served on then Governor Roy Barnes three-person transition team, and in 1999 accepted the Governor’s invitation to serve on the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.

Mayor Franklin is committed to making Atlanta a safer-cleaner city, creating a better city for families, seniors and children and creating a more open, responsive, effective city government. In November 2002, she issued a call to the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta to spearhead an initiative that will provide a comprehensive plan for addressing the issue of homelessness in Atlanta.

Mayor Franklin has lived in southwest Atlanta for more than 30 years and has three adult children.

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2002 Congressman John Lewis

Congressman John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing personal dignity and building what he calls “The Beloved Community.” He has displayed a sense of ethics and morality that has won him the admiration of many of his colleagues in the United States Congress, for which he served for eight (8) terms.

 Congressman Lewis, with writer Michael D’Orso, authored Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (June 1998). The book is a first-hand account of this nation’s civil rights movement.

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Andrew Young has been instrumental in advancing the causes of human rights, rights to housing and shelter and basic human necessities at home and around the world. In addition to serving as a leading civil-rights activist, Mr. Young represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, and served as a United National Ambassador under President Jimmy Carter. He served as mayor of Atlanta from 1982 until 1989.

 Today, he is the chairman of the Atlanta-based GoodWorks International, a specialty-consulting group that provides strategic services to corporations and governments operating in the global economy, and a public affairs professor at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

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