Social Worker, J.E. and Z.B. Butler Child Advocacy Center

In 1992, some visionary people over at J.E. and Z.B. Butler Child Advocacy Center, then named the Queens Child Guidance Center, working with three- to five-year-olds began to question how they could prevent the cigarette burns they found all too often on the backs of abused children. Realizing that they were getting these kids too late, the Child Advocacy Center developed a program to identify the mothers most likely to abuse or neglect their kids, and started working with them even before the birth of their child. Robin Hood gave them the money to start the program, which is the only one of its kind.

Rosa Pardo was one of the program's first social workers. Rosa is one of many people at the Child Advocacy Center and throughout New York who could do just about anything; she's smart and talented. But instead she chose to help our city's neediest by giving of herself twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This award was in honor of Rosa and all the caregivers in New York City that have helped to save children's lives.