The SHS Goal Award
2008

Inspiration Corporation

John Pfeiffer, Executive Director of Inspiration Corporation, applauds the help of the Sacred Heart community at recent Parents of the Heart luncheon.

The recipient of the Fifth Annual Sacred Heart Schools Goal Award is Inspiration Corporation. This year, the award celebrates and recognizes a person or an organization that exemplifies Goals 4 of Sacred Heart Education:
        The building of community as a Christian value.
Inspiration Corporation, by providing social services to more than 2,000 persons, not only builds community for the homeless and other underserved constituencies, but also builds community among its legion of volunteers.  Sacred Heart Schools values the partnership we have forged with Inspiration Corporation, which has been mutually beneficial. Our students and staff have grown as we have assisted in the Café and Café Too.
        SHS students have been assisting on a weekly basis at the Café for the past five years. And, for the 5th year, SHS faculty and staff have provided and served Thanksgiving Dinner at the Café, in addition to cooking and serving breakfast there monthly. 
            By providing skills, employment, housing, education and personal counseling, in addition to a square meal, the Inspiration Corporation has helped its clients to a brighter future.

The SHS Goal Award
2007

Reverend Monsignor Kenneth Velo

        Reverend Monsignor Kenneth Velo, President of the Big Shoulders Fund and Senior Executive, Catholic Collaboration, DePaul University, personifies what can be achieved when inspired leadership combines with compassionate spirituality.  In his eight years as President of the Catholic Extension Society, Msgr. Velo has addressed poverty and education in rural Catholic parishes, distributing $20 million anually to the poorest parts of North America and the South Pacific.  His work with the Big Shoulders Fund supports inner-city Chicago schools. He helped form the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, which brings together Jews, Presbyterians, Epsicopalians and Luteherans to address community issues. And he does all this with a smile, an infectious spirit and a wonderful sense of humor.

The SHS Goal Award
2006

Dr. Carl L. Backer, MD &
Dr. Constantine Mavroudis, MD,
heart surgeons at
Children’s Memorial Hospital

        Dr. Carl L. Backer (right) & Dr. Constantine Mavroudis of Children's Memorial Hospital. Dr. Mavroudis is the Surgeon-in-Chief, Head of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgery, and Program Director of the heart transplant program.   Dr. Backer, an attending cardiovascular-thoracic surgeon, is the Surgical Director of Children's Memorial's heart transplant program. They train surgeons throughout the world through telemedicine; their book, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, is in its third edition.  They have been universally recognized for developing better treatments and surgical techniques to improve the lives of children.

The SHS Goal Award
2005

Sr. Rosemary Connelly, Misericordia/Heart of Mercy

        Last February, Sacred Heart Schools honored prominent Chicagoan Sr. Rosemary Connelly for her lifelong dedication to those with special needs. Since taking over Misericordia/Heart of Mercy in 1969, Sr. Connelly transformed it from a home for just 132 children under 6 years to place where 560 children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities can live lives of dignity, respect, challenge and beauty.
        In her acceptance,Sr. Connelly said, "I feel great gratitude to the 550 children and adults who have shown so many of us the way to God. They are truly gift givers.”
        It is they, she explains, who are the teachers. “We, the so-called sound of mind and body, can learn so much from them. By their simplicity, their generosity of spirit, their acceptance and trust of whatever God may ask, they call each of us forth, to die to our selfishness, our greed, our pettiness. They challenge us to be our best selves."

The SHS Goal Award
2004

Shirley Ryan,
Pathways Foundation