The Cornell Public Service Center has announced that 1997 Cornell alumna and staff member Darael Mahoney, of Erin, N.Y., has been awarded a 1999 echoing green Fellowship, from the nonprofit echoing green Foundation based in New York City.

In one of 19 projects chosen by the foundation from a pool of 300 applications, Mahoney and her partner in the grant, German Lopez Gil, will participate in a grass-roots community project in the Dominican Republic, working to foster sustainable access to basic resources for a small, rural community.

The echoing green Foundation seeks social-change leaders to develop or establish projects or organizations that will address specific social needs in a community. The foundation applies a venture capital approach to philanthropy by providing seed money as well as technical support to emerging social-change entrepreneurs. Currently there are over 300 echoing green fellows creating innovative public service organizations or projects that serve as catalysts for positive social change. Fellows work both internationally and domestically in areas including human rights, environmental issues, the arts, education, criminal justice and community development.

Mahoney, a graduate with distinction of the Cornell College of Human Ecology in social work, will work with residents of Sonador, a rural community in the Dominican Republic that she first made connections with as part of a 1997 internship sponsored by the Cornell Tradition.

The remote community, located in a mountainous region along the island's northern coastline, is home to about 50 families who live without running water, electricity, access to health care or a dependable roadway to the outside world.

In response to extreme community needs, Mahoney and Lopez Gil will use the grant to facilitate the construction of a community center. It will serve as a community-based focal point through which several, initial interrelated projects will be carried out and coordinated by community residents.

Mahoney and Lopez Gil will use the $90,000 grant over the next two years to facilitate the construction of the center and initiate the implementation of several projects, while advocating for access to the necessary resources. Projects will include a lending library, a health-care clinic, a

women's educational health cooperative and a community cultural art project. The construction and development of the community center is part of a five-phase plan to begin in September.

Mahoney currently is the assistant director of Cornell Tradition. She is the mother of four children, whom she raised as a single parent while both working at Cornell and being a full-time student of the university, where she was a Merrill Presidential Scholar and four-year Cornell Tradition fellow.