New Orleans 2011 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award Recipient Honored

David W. Welker, Special Agent in Charge of the New Orleans Division of the FBI, is pleased to announce his selection of Herreast Harrison, the founder of the Guardians Institute, as the local recipient of the FBI’s 2011 Director’s Community Leadership Award in recognition of her outstanding efforts to educate African-American adolescents residing in New Orleans.

Since 1990 the FBI has publicly recognized individuals and organizations who have exhibited exemplary leadership within the local community and whose leadership has assisted the FBI and local law enforcement personnel in making safer communities with the distinction of the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award.

Herreast Harrison was recognized for her outstanding efforts to educate African-American adolescents residing in New Orleans through her work at the Guardians Institute, a youth development program in the New Orleans area focusing on literacy, physical fitness, and cultural arts. The program sponsors local children, grades kindergarten through 12th, to attend free classes on programs such as literacy, business finance and management skills, history, art, music, and cultural movement. Ms. Harrison oversees all Guardian Institute programs and monitors community leaders, volunteers, and elders throughout their instructional sessions. The Guardians Institute teaches literacy classes under the guidance of the Louisiana Department of Education to ensure compliance with state mandates.

The Guardians Institute lies in the middle of the New Orleans’ Upper 9th Ward, a community ravished by poverty, high crime, and devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Following the hurricane, the Guardians Institute became a safe haven for African-American youth. With Ms. Harrison’s generosity and dedication, the Guardians Institute maintains itself as a key component on African-American history and culture in New Orleans.

To further enhance their ability to educate a larger contingency of New Orleans youth, the Guardians Institute recently broke ground on a new community center. The Harrison family donated the land where the new Guardians Institute will be constructed. The facility will house academic and skill classrooms, music and dance auditoriums, and a large library that will contain over 25,000 books. The new facility has been named a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) site.

Ms. Harrison was first presented the award by SAC Welker at the New Orleans’ FBI office, and today, her 75th birthday, she was honored by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III in a ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Additionally, today Ms. Harrison’s daughter, Cherice Harrison-Nelson, and Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr., her grandson, will be hosting a book giveaway to 75 local preschool children in New Orleans. The book program was started by Ms. Herreast Harrison, and the family is honored to continue work on the same day as she is being recognized by FBI Director Robert Mueller.