This month we will celebrate our present day role model. Dr. Marian Wright Edelman. From her work with poor children in Mississippi in the 1960s to the present, Dr. Edelman has endeavored to give all children the public voice they lack yet so desperately need. Through the Children's Defense Fund, which she created over 20 years ago, Dr. Edelman has sought to bring the plight of children to the attention of policymakers and the public and has been a vigorous advocate for the creation and funding of programs to improve children's lives, for strengthening families and for weaving a web of community support for children. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, she became the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi state bar while serving as head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund's office in Jackson, Mississippi. Following a move to Washington, D.C., she became counsel to the Poor People's Campaign and later established the Washington Research Project, where she concentrated on lobbying Congress for expanded child and family nutrition programs and an expanded Head Start program. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund. In 1995, Dr. Edelman received The Heinz Award for her dedication to protecting the right and meeting the needs of America's children.