Sister of St. Joseph Christine Wagner, executive director and cofounder of St. Joseph’s Neighborhood Center, won the 2014 Farash Prize for Social Entrepreneurship Nov. 5.
As a result, the neighborhood center will receive $100,000 toward its work providing health care, education and social services for the uninsured and the underinsured. The Sisters of St. Joseph opened the center in 1993.
The center’s 17 staff members and 250 volunteers serve 950 patients a year for medical services and 1,000 individuals for other services.
Sister Wagner was the second recipient of the Farash Prize for Social Entrepreneurship. The first-ever recipient was the late Tom Ferraro, founder of Foodlink, who won the award in 2012. The prize honors the entrepreneurial spirit of Max Farash, a founder of the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation.
Other finalists for the 2014 prize were Dr. Louise Bingham Bennett and Sadiya Omar, who have served Somalian refugees in western New York, and Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez, founder and artistic director of the Borinquen Dance Theatre.
