FFC International Youth Award

International Youth Awards, April / May 1996

FFC proudly presented its International Award to Cathryn Murray of Walnut Creek, California, for her outstanding work on a global level. FFC’s national awards were presented to two outstanding young men, Shawn Adkinson of Washington, D.C., and Manuel Alcala of Dallas, Texas. The award recipients received a two-week cultural trip to Denmark, hosted by the Copenhagen Boys’ Choir.

Cathryn Michael Murray founded the Global Teen Club International at the age of 12. The GTCI is an international organization of ethnically diverse and socially aware youth providing an open forum for communication through a monthly publication. Cathryn has single-handedly planned and run the charitable non-profit organization, often being called a grassroots ambassador. At times she has worked on three jobs in order to run the GTCI, while going to school full-time and caring for her disable mother. In 1994, she published a multi-ethnic poetry book titled, “Small Things.” Cathryn participates locally volunteering as a youth mentor for the Contral Costa Library and at local juvenile facilities. She is on the national advisory board of Youthwish and is an active participant for the John Keets Foundation for AIDS awareness. Cathryn is working toward the recognition and cure for CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome). She has won a number of awards and was named international liaison to the International Association of Educators for World Peace, NGO United Nations.

Cathryn has lived most of her life in a single parent family in the ghettos of Pittsburg surrounded by drug dealers, crime and violence. At the age of eight she began writing to pen pals that she found through magazines. In the following three years she had over one hundred pen friends, and she began seeing the world through their letters. To pay for this, she started selling left over Halloween candy. Eventually, she made selling candy into a profitable business, supporting her family and helping them move to Walnut Creek, California.