Secretary Matt Rodriquez receives the Augustus Freeman Hawkins Award

Post March 1, 2016

Secretary Matt Rodriquez, California Environmental Protection Agency, was awarded the Augustus Freeman Hawkins Award of Distinguished Merit in Community Service at the Our Promise appreciation event on March 1, 2016.

The award was presented by Karen Baker, Our Promise Chair and Chief Service Officer of CaliforniaVolunteers. The award celebrates the vision of the man who created Our Promise, Augustus Freeman Hawkins.

He was honored with this award for leading his agency in innovation, allowing strong support and recruitment of campaign chairs and key connectors and providing educational opportunities for his employees to learn more about the needs of communities statewide.

During the past two years, CalEPA has transformed their Our Promise campaign to become more efficient and environmentally friendly by finding ways to streamline the campaign and bring more things online. This freed up time for the department chairs to focus on education opportunities rather than distributing paper pledge forms.

It’s no surprise that all of his tremendous efforts earned him this year’s Augustus Freeman Hawkins Award for outstanding dedication to service. Thank you for all you do Secretary Rodriquez!

The Augustus Freeman Hawkins Award is named after Assemblymember Augustus Freeman who authored Assembly Bill 990, which became State Law in 1957 and established what Our Promise was previously named, the California State Employees Charitable Campaign.