While most people think of peace on a national or global scale, Maver said it is very much a local thing. "We're not reinventing the wheel," she said. Maver said the organization can be a catalyst for change in the community, building upon programs already in place. Heart Phoenix worked with Maver at the Peace Alliance in Washington, where the latter was the executive director before leaving for the River Phoenix Center. While River's younger brother, Joaquin Phoenix, has carried the acting torch, his sister Liberty Phoenix Lord owns a green-building business here.īoth have roles in the center, with Joaquin on the board of directors and Liberty its office manager. "It's so open and progressive in so many ways," said Heart Phoenix, who lives here with her husband, Jeffrey Weisberg, a Gainesville mediator who serves as the director of programs and outreach. Then, there's the city itself: The family is comfortable in Gainesville. It even had a little seed money left over, so for Heart, it's like she is continuing River's work. Maver and Phoenix said Gainesville was a natural place to set up the center.įirst, the nonprofit organization that River established in 1993, Eco-Rica Preservation Inc., was already established in Florida. "He recognized at such a young age that everyone has a contribution to offer." "That was a great way to get the attention of the world," she said. Heart Phoenix said her son had a way to reach young people that many other celebrities couldn't. River Phoenix was a boy when he hit the big screen in films like "Stand by Me," ultimately earning an Academy Award nomination for his part in "Running on Empty" in 1989 and being hoisted onto a pedestal that allowed him to draw attention to issues he cared about like environmental protection and animal rights. The goal is to start in Gainesville before opening centers around the country, then the world, Maver said. Their idea, though, is to provide coordination to the efforts in hopes of penetrating the community that much deeper. Phoenix and the executive director of the center, Dorothy "Dot" Maver, said there already are a number of organizations and individuals working in this area locally, like homeless advocates, the United Way, the Early Learning Coalition and a host of others. The River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding opened last year, and while there isn't yet a walk-in office, it is up and running, providing mediation and communication programs through local schools, teaming up with University of Florida law students and working on partnerships with the State Attorney's Office to curb the cycles of violence - schoolyard, criminal, domestic or otherwise.
"We wanted to do something in his honor, and we weren't quite sure what it would be," Heart Phoenix, a Gainesville-area resident for the past few decades, said in a recent interview.Īlready lobbying the federal government to add a Cabinet-level secretary of peace, Phoenix said she decided to start at the local level. 31, 1993, in Los Angeles in what an autopsy concluded was an accidental drug-related death. While family members had valued their privacy about River, his mother, Heart Phoenix, said they wanted to "create the continuing story of who River really was, not how he died." River died on Oct. More than 18 years after his death in Hollywood at age 23, actor River Phoenix's family has turned a nonprofit organization he started nine months before he died into a Gainesville center to promote peace in his name.
0 kommentar(er)
