ACC Community Bridges Award

The ACC Community Bridges Award recognizes outstanding, non-cable industry partner organizations and individuals taking part in cable communications and public affairs initiatives. The cable industry is committed to improving the communities in which it serves, and partner organizations are often instrumental to the success of cable’s efforts. Habitat for Humanity International is the 2008 winner of the ACC Community Bridges Award.

Habitat for Humanity International is an ecumenical Christian ministry that welcomes to its work all people dedicated to the cause of eliminating poverty housing. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has built more than 250,000 houses worldwide, providing simple, decent and affordable shelter for more than 1 million people.

Through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials, Habitat builds and rehabilitates simple, decent houses with the help of the partner families. Habitat houses are sold to partner families at no profit and financed with affordable loans. The homeowners’ monthly mortgage payments are used to build still more Habitat homes.

The cable industry and Habitat have partnered all across the country to further this mission by raising awareness of the need for decent housing and by partnering on local projects to build affordable shelter. Through the Cable Hope Fund, the cable industry gave a $200,000 grant in late 2005 to Habitat for its efforts to rebuild homes and help families devastated by the Gulf Coast Hurricanes. With the return of the Cable Show to New Orleans in May 2008, the industry will once again step up to help rebuild New Orleans.

CableCares, the industry’s umbrella charity program, will host a battle of the bands fundraiser at the annual closing night party of The Cable Show ’08 with part of the proceeds to be donated to Habitat.

The West Division of Charter Communications has been deeply involved with Habitat for the last four years. It has sponsored local homes built in Long Beach, Calif., such as one in 2007 under the banner of The Mayor’s Build, and is a major sponsor of the national “Cars for Homes” program, creating a PSA shown across the country. It even connected Charter’s East Division to a project to build a home in one of the Gulf State systems devastated by Katrina.

For the past two years Cox Communications Tucson has partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a home as part of the annual “Yes In My Back Yard (Y.I.M.B.Y.) Building Freedom Day.”

DIY Network has teamed with Habitat for Humanity on a number of initiatives over the past six years including several TV specials, a five-part series on Habitat resulting in Spanish and English instructional videos for volunteers, multiple market events and helping to host the 200,000th Home Build in Knoxville in 2005.

In 2006, DIY sponsored the PRSSA Bateman Competition, utilizing student teams from more than 90 universities to implement public relations campaigns in their communities on behalf of Habitat. Last year, DIY produced a one-hour special, Hollywood for Habitat, featuring Habitat’s weeklong Jimmy Carter Work Project (JCWP) in Los Angeles. The special will air in 2008 the week before this year’s renamed Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Work Project along the Gulf Coast.

Through its pro-social campaign CMT One Country, CMT has encouraged its viewers and employees to volunteer for Habitat. On an episode of the CMT Top 20 Countdown, Reba McEntire and the show’s host presented a $54,000 check, the proceeds from ticket sales from the CMT Giants: Reba concert taping, to Habitat to pay for the 300th Habitat home built in the Nashville area. During June 2007, CMT employees participated in the four-week build of this house that went to an Iraqi refugee family of eight.

The SCI FI Channel, along with its original miniseries production, Tin Man, partnered with Habitat to help a partner family in Kansas find their way home. The partnership will see the network and the reimagined incarnation of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard Oz support the dreams of one Habitat family by fully funding a new homebuilding project. Additionally, SCI FI raised funds through the channel’s “Brick by Brick” online fund-raiser to help make additional affordable housing opportunities possible.