The California Wellness Foundation Announces 2009 California Peace Prize Honorees

The California Wellness Foundation Announces 2009 California Peace Prize
Honorees
Unsung Heroes To Receive $25,000 Cash Awards for Violence Prevention Work

SAN FRANCISCO Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Brian King, a former gang member and drug
dealer, started a faith-based program in partnership with law enforcement,
city leaders, and schools to provide services and support to at-risk youth in
southwest Fresno. A refugee from Cambodia, Phalen Lim became an integral
leader in an agency that combats gang violence and promotes cultural pride and
understanding in Santa Ana. Olis Simmons applied her extensive experience in
developing systems and programs that foster community wellness to create a
youth leadership development center in East Oakland that prepares low-income
youth of color for leadership and successful careers.

On October 28, The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) will honor these
three community leaders with its 17th annual California Peace Prize at a
ceremony in San Francisco. In recognition of their efforts to prevent violence
and promote peace, the honorees will each receive a cash award of $25,000.
[Profiles and photographs of the honorees can be accessed at
http://www.calwellness.org/leadership_recognition/ca_peace_prize/2009/; video
profiles are available on request.]

"The honorees are representative of thousands of unsung heroes who work with
youth to prevent violence in communities throughout California," said Gary L.
Yates, TCWF president and CEO. "This year's honorees also show that
perseverance through hardship can help build essential leadership that makes
our state healthier and safer."

Brian King
As co-founder and chief executive of Fresno Street Saints, Brian King has come
a long way from his days as a gang member and drug dealer in Chicago. Fresno
Street Saints, a faith-based organization that seeks to restore southwest
Fresno as a safe and healthy community, provides services and support to
at-risk youth and their families. The organization's services include gang
prevention and intervention programs that offer educational enrichment, youth
employment training, grief counseling and family leadership development.

"What we're doing is taking back these streets and directing resources right
to the people, especially to the youth," said King. "The community leaders and
resources must be as visible and as accessible as the gangs are, or the gangs
will continue to win."

Phalen Lim
Escaping genocide, disease and starvation in Cambodia, Phalen Lim made her new
life in Santa Ana, California. Lim and her family sought help from The
Cambodian Family (TCF), an agency that provides health, employment and youth
services to the refugee and immigrant community of Orange County. Originally a
client -- and then a volunteer -- she is now a youth program director for TCF,
working primarily with Cambodian and Latino youth.

"Youth can identify with people who have lived in the same neighborhood, gone
through similar struggles and made it," said Lim. "I am a very strong
believer in leading by example."

Olis Simmons
Olis Simmons has devoted her career to developing systems and programs that
foster community wellness. Simmons helped found Youth UpRising (YU) and serves
as its executive director. YU is a youth leadership development center that
serves young people (ages 13 to 24) from Alameda County's lowest-income
communities. This public-private partnership offers services in health and
wellness, anchored by a school-linked health clinic and integrated mental
health services; art and expression, featuring dance, music and film
production; and career, pipeline preparation and placement.

"The best prevention is investing in young people, in their education and
sense of possibility," said Simmons. "Be expansive in your notion of
prevention. It's not simply preventing a physical disease; it's preventing
the loss of hope."

The California Wellness Foundation is a private independent, private
foundation, created in 1992, with a mission to improve the health of the
people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education
and disease prevention.

The Foundation prioritizes eight issues for funding: diversity in the health
professions, environmental health, healthy aging, mental health, teenage
pregnancy prevention, violence prevention, women's health, and work and
health. It also responds to timely issues and special projects outside the
funding priorities.

Since its founding, TCWF has awarded 5,719 grants totaling more than $719
million. It is one of the state's largest private foundations. Please visit
TCWF's website at www.CalWellness.org for more information, including a
newsroom section devoted to the California Peace Prize and the three honorees.
High-resolution photos are also available.

Note to reporters & editors:
"The" in "The California Wellness Foundation" is part of the Foundation's
legal name. Please do not drop or lowercase the "T."

SOURCE The California Wellness Foundation

Bilen Mesfin of i.e. communications, LLC, +1-510-681-5978; or Cecilia Laiche
of TCWF, +1-818-702-1900