Project Shine director to receive presidential medal

Patience Lehrman, 41, of Philadelphia's Project Shine, has come a long way from her native Cameroon.

On Friday, the executive director of the national immigrant-integration project, which began at Temple University three decades ago, will be among a score of citizens to receive medals from President Obama for distinguished public service in 2012.

"Their selflessness and courage inspire us," the president said in announcing their selection from among 6,000 people nominated by public submissions.

Lehrman, who came to America in 1997, married a U.S. citizen, and lives in Broomall, said in an interview that the recognition was dizzying.

"Twenty-nine years ago, I was on a farm in a little West African village with a hoe in hand," she said. "In a week I will be receiving the second-highest civilian award in this country. Only in America."

Other honorees include a prominent Boston pediatrician, an Iraq combat veteran from Florida, the director of a Georgia nonprofit that tackles obesity, the head of a New York support group for the parents of gay children, former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford (D., Pa.), and - as a group - the six teachers and administrators shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Project Shine, which makes its home at Temple's Intergenerational Center, was born of a tragic incident 30 years ago. An elderly Asian woman committed suicide, and it was determined that a high degree of social isolation was a leading factor in the death.

"The news challenged the perception that immigrant communities are always tight-knit and supportive," notes the project's history, posted on its website.

Founders resolved to provide immigrants and refugees with a framework for healthy integration into American culture.

Over the decades, Project Shine has partnered with 31 colleges and universities, and more than 200 ethnic, community, and faith-based organizations in 16 cities, to provide tutoring in English, pamphlets on the health-care needs of older immigrants, and study groups for immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens.

Since its founding, more than 10,000 Project Shine volunteers have provided 150,000 hours of service to 40,000 older immigrants, with support from Learn and Serve America, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency.

After serving in the Senate from 1991 to 1995, Wofford became chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service through 2001.

An equal rights crusader and volunteer adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Wofford was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as a special assistant for civil rights in 1961. A few years later he became a top administrator of the Peace Corps. From 1970 to 1978 he was the fifth president of Bryn Mawr College.

Now 86, he lives in Washington and works with the Aspen Institute, a policy studies group, on how to make national service "a rite of passage" for young people who want to take a year between graduating from high school and going on to college or jobs.

In an interview, Wofford said he was "honored and humbled" by the presidential medal.

"The fact that [the other honorees] include the people who lost their lives trying to save those kids," he added, "shows the great and terrible variations on service. The rest of us who are getting the award will be in awe of the posthumous recognition of those six."