Gladys Vega’s Acceptance Remarks.
“I am deeply honored to accept the Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy. I want to thank Grantmakers In Health, the selection committee, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and everyone who made this recognition possible. If you had told me that I, a little Puerto Rican girl, would one day be on this stage accepting such an amazing award for health equity advocacy, I wouldn’t have believed you…
But most importantly, I accept this award on behalf of the families, organizers, youth leaders, mothers, workers, elders, and immigrant communities who have trusted La Colaborativa with their stories, their struggles, and their hopes for more than thirty years.
I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a city that taught me very early what inequality looks like, but also what resilience, solidarity, and community love look like. The work we do at La Colaborativa has never been about charity alone. It has always been about dignity, power, and creating the conditions for communities to shape the systems that affect their lives.
When I joined La Colaborativa in 1990, we were a small grassroots organization working to ensure immigrant families had a voice in the decisions impacting their neighborhoods. Over time, we learned something important: if we only respond to crises, communities remain trapped in survival mode. But when you combine immediate support with organizing, advocacy, leadership development, and long-term investment in people, communities begin to transform themselves.
That belief shaped everything we built.
It shaped our work advancing immigrant protections and housing justice. It shaped our efforts to organize residents around environmental racism in Chelsea. It shaped our youth leadership programs, our workforce development initiatives, and our campaigns for economic mobility. And it shaped our response during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our community became one of the hardest-hit in the nation.
What began as food distribution from my front porch grew into one of the largest community-based emergency response efforts in Massachusetts. But even in that moment, our goal was not simply to help people survive the crisis. Our goal was to ensure families emerged with greater stability, stronger support systems, and a greater voice in shaping what came next.
Today, La Colaborativa reaches tens of thousands of residents through food access, health equity programs, housing stabilization, youth development, workforce training, and community organizing initiatives. We have helped connect uninsured families to healthcare, supported pathways into living-wage careers, and advocated for policies that expand protections for immigrants, workers, and tenants.
Still, this recognition comes during a difficult moment for many communities across our country. Fear, instability, and division continue to impact immigrant families every day. But I remain hopeful because I have seen what happens when communities organize with courage and compassion. I have seen young people become advocates. I have seen parents become leaders. I have seen neighborhoods that were overlooked build collective power and demand justice.
That is what this award represents to me.
Not one individual, but the power of community leadership.
Not simply service delivery, but systems change rooted in love, dignity, and respect.
Thank you again for this incredible honor. We will continue doing what our community has always done: levantando al pueblo, lifting our people up together.”
Thank you.
Gladys Vega
President and CEO, La Colaborativa
