GREENWICH — Charles B. Tisdale, longtime executive director of Bridgeport's leading anti-poverty agency, was honored recently by the Harvard Business School Club of Connecticut Community Partners.

Tisdale, who heads Action for Bridgeport Community Development Inc., was awarded the club's Distinguished Civic Leader Award.

He won the award at the group's recent spring gala in Greenwich.

Tisdale oversees a staff of more than 400 people who provide anti-poverty services to more than 35,000 residents in Bridgeport, Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, Stratford and Trumbull.

He is also the creator of Total Learning, a Bridgeport-based public-private partnership working to reform public education. The Distinguished Civic Leader Award goes each year to leaders in nonprofit management who have significantly contributed to their communities. Past recipients include Curt Welling, president and CEO of AmeriCares Foundation; Al Barber, executive director of Catholic Charities of Fairfield County; and Chuck and Deborah Royce, well-known philanthropists and directors of the Avon Theatre Film Center Inc. Tisdale was honored for his lifelong social entrepreneurship and efforts to give hope to the poor.

The Total Learning program focuses on teaching children from birth to 9 years old how to learn. The mission of Total Learning is to give inner-city children a much greater chance at achieving a productive life through education. The holistic approach includes helping high-risk infants

Advertisement
and toddlers from birth to 3 (Child First), a Music Together program that involves parents, and a kindergarten program that has students in class 10 hours a day for 11 months of the year. Total Learning now has 16 kindergartens and a first-grade class, all in Bridgeport. The Harvard Business School Club of Connecticut unites more than 2,400 alumni who live and work in the state. Through the Community Partners program, alumni have the opportunity to provide pro bono consulting and apply their wealth of functional, industry, and board expertise to the strategic business issues facing leading nonprofits.