HeeWon Lee, winner of the Stride Rite Post-Graduate Fellowship award, hugs Tim McCarthy at PBHA’s 5th Annual Celebration of Public Service on Monday.

CORRECTION APPENDED

The Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) honored students who had devoted their undergraduate careers to public service Monday night—and it distributed fellowships that will allow some seniors to continue their work full-time after graduation.

Over 200 students attended PBHA’s fifth annual public service celebration in Lowell Dining Hall.

“It’s an opportunity for the student-led organizations to honor seniors, give out awards and fellowships, and celebrate the outstanding volunteers and accomplishments of the year,” said Gene A. Corbin, executive director of PBHA.

PBHA is a student-led organization that coordinates the activities of 1,800 volunteers and serves nearly 10,000 local residents.

“Service is not something that gets celebrated very often,” said Alicia Rodriguez ’07, president of PBHA.

But on Monday night, more than four dozen students received honors.

And three members of the Class of ’06—Rachel S. Bolden-Kramer, HeeWon Lee, and Jasmine Xinting Zhang—won Stride Rite Post-Graduate Fellowships, with $25,000 grants for each senior.

The Stride Rite Foundation is a group that has supported undergraduate public service through PBHA since 1983. An administrator from the foundation, Ellen Sahl, along with Corbin and six other committee members, reviewed over 20 applications for the post-graduate fellowship.

Bolden-Kramer will use her grant to develop a curriculum for young lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women of color in the San Francisco Bay area. Zhang will coordinate a legal aid program for the London Chinatown community. And Lee will expand a childcare and education program at the Codman Square Community Health Center in Dorchester, so that the children of patients will be looked after while their parents receive treatment.

“Public service is not something that you can wait until you have more money, contacts, experience,” Lee said.

“The key is realizing that you don’t need more contacts or more experience or more anything,” she added. “You just need the courage to step out of Harvard Square to work with the people in the community.”

—Staff writer Joyce Y. Zhang can be reached at jyzhang@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

The print and initial online versions of this article misstated the name of Jasmine Xinting Zhang '06, winner of a $25,000 Stride Rite Post-Graduate Fellowship.