According to the American Place Theatre, the organization receives calls from teachers and principals every day, many of whom have been able to budget for these educational programs in the past, who say they now cannot find the funding. They are responding to this vital need by inviting you to help us provide these invaluable programs at no cost to deserving and needing schools. Over 85% of the American students reached by this vital program live below the poverty line, and studies show that a majority of families living in poverty own one or no books in their home. We must keep reading, writing, and the arts a primary component of the education of young American citizens, and The American Place Theatre’s Literature to Life program is doing just that for over 30,000 middle and high school students every year.

Celebrities such as actors Alec Baldwin, Sam Waterston, John Hockenberry and Kathleen Chalfant, Eric Bogosian, Jessica Lange, Anna Deavere Smith, Chris Cooper and Marion Seldes and poet laureate Billy Collins have supported the Project 451. Meryl Streep shares the importance of supporting the arts and literacy program Literature to Life, in a time where funding is being cut and the need is greater than ever. In 2009, she recorded a reading of Ray Bradbury’s classic American novel, Fahrenheit 451. It paints a picture of a world without free thought, a world where citizens don’t read. What if that came true?

Partners In Health (PIH) is a nonprofit corporation based in Boston that is committed to improving the health and well-being of people living in poor communities. The stories of PIH and its co-founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, were chronicled in Tracy Kidder’s bestselling book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. PIH believes that health care is a fundamental human right, not a privilege. For more than 20 years, PIH has worked with local partner organizations and national governments to provide technical and financial assistance, medical supplies, and administrative support to projects in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Burundi, Mexico, Guatemala, and Boston. The goal of these partnerships is neither charity nor development but rather “pragmatic solidarity” – a commitment to struggle alongside the destitute sick against the economic and political structures that cause and perpetuate poverty and disease.

Meryl has supported Partners in Health with a 2009 benefit performance called “Courage in Concert”, reuniting the original cast of Tony Kushner’s 2006 “Mother Courage” production, including guest stars such as Daniel Craig and Maggie Gyllenhaal. In 2010, she mentioned the organization in her Golden Globes speech, winning for “Julie & Julia”.

I come to Golden Globes weekend and I am conflicted how to have my happy movie self in the face of everything I’m aware of in the real world, and that’s when I have my mother’s voice coming to me: Partners in Health, shoot some money to Partners In Health, and be damn grateful you have the dollars to help. And I am grateful. I’m really grateful.

“Partners In Health sends thanks to Meryl Streep tonight on behalf of the people of Haiti. In her Golden Globe acceptance speech, by paying homage to her mother’s intolerance of “gloom and doom,” and by channeling her mother’s voice, Meryl gave hope to many—to our staff in Haiti, to our patients, to all those pained by the footage of a country in ruins. For five days, we have been mourning for Haiti. Our hearts are broken, and yet, we know that we must not languish in our grief. We must persevere in our efforts to provide relief in Haiti; to increase our support with supplies, medicines, and trained medical staff. Meryl, you are much more than “a vessel for other people’s stories,” but we thank you tonight for launching Partners In Health’s story, and, therefore, Haiti’s story. Partners In Health is proud to be an organization that inspires hope and gratitude in you and many others. But we cannot take credit—all of our lessons in hope have come from Haiti”. (source: Partners in Health)

The same year, Meryl lent her voice to the audiobook “Haiti After the Earthquake” to benefit Partners in Health. It was released in 2011.

The contributions and accomplishments by women for the most part have been overlooked and consequently omitted from mainstream culture. The National Women’s History Museum will help fill that void. Rather than rewriting current exhibitions at other history museums or having to decide what to omit elsewhere to “fit in” women’s history, the NWHM will serve to place women’s history along side current historical exhibitions. Women’s history isn’t meant to rewrite history. The objective is to promote scholarship and expand our knowledge of American history.

Meryl Streep became the Museum’s national spokesperson after President and CEO Joan Wages wrote her a letter. “She is immensely kind and thoughtful,” Wages said. “She just gets the importance of a museum like this that will honor women and show that they have contributed to the building of this nation in ways that they have not, to this date, been given credit.” Meryl annually hosts the museum’s “The de Pizan Honors” gala, where, each year, NWHM pays tribute posthumously to selected women with an award in their name presented to a contemporary counterpart. At the 2009 event, Meryl donated $1 million to the cause. She has also participated in numerous high profile events for the Museum, including “Shine On” at Radio City Music Hall for two consecutive years.

or nearly 70 years, NCADD has been a valuable resource for millions of people struggling with addiction. Their founder, Marty Mann, got sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). When AA was just getting started in 1935, Marty’s sponsor was AA Co-founder, Bill Wilson. Marty exuded courage and unwavering belief in the dignity of all people. She worked tirelessly to provide education to raise the awareness of addiction across our society. Today, NCADD continues to operate on two parallel tracks – the National level and the community level. Today there are almost 100 NCADD Affiliates across the United States. NCADD believes that all people suffering from alcohol and drug abuse deserve the chance to be helped.

In 1996, Meryl Streep hosted “What Should I Tell My Child About Drinking?”, a prevention video for parents developed by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. It was released on December 1, 1996. The video offers viewers advice both about good parenting and how to discuss alcohol. Actors performing in a series of believable family situations make this valuable information easily accessible to parents who need an introduction to an often difficult subject. “With Ms. Streep as the host of our video, we can reach a much wider audience with our message,” said Eugene D. McWilliams, chair of NCADD’s nominating and awards board committee. “Her merits as an actress confer instant prestige on our project, but more significantly viewers will be able to relate to the fact that she and her husband are raising four children.”

For the past 12 years, the environmental group Mothers & Others has been providing consumers with valuable information about the dangerous chemicals that have become ubiquitous in our consumer society. In perhaps its most famous fight, Mothers & Others, with actress Meryl Streep as spokesperson, led a campaign in the late 1980s against the use of the chemical daminozide. This suspected carcinogen, also known as alar, was sprayed on apples so they’d ripen simultaneously. The group also created regional Shoppers’ Campaigns, launched the CORE Values eco-label and led campaigns against genetic engineering and for organic cotton. “Mothers and Others” deceased in 2001.

In 1989, having read a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report about pesticides on fruits and vegetables, Meryl Streep founded Mothers and Others. Meryl and a few neighbors recruited started handing out informational flyers in the neighborhood and making pests of themselves in local grocery stores demanding they do their part in keeping kids safe.

What prompted me to begin the organization was that I had become aware of this report that the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) had commissioned on a wide range of pesticides that were on fruits and vegetables and the fact that it was particularly dangerous to children because they consume more for their body weight and also that their systems were more vulnerable as developing systems, as are expectant mothers, obviously. So, I had very small kids then who were mainlining apple juice, among other things, and there was one particular substance that was on apples called Alar that was something you couldn’t wash off the fruit. It was not a pesticide – it was something that kept apples from dropping early. And people said you couldn’t grow apples without it, that the industry would collapse in Washington State without it, it was impossible – if we did this that there would be such economic wreckage and that had to be measured against these human health issues.

On March 7, 1989, Meryl Streep held a Washington new conference to announce the formation of NRDC’s Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits. The announcement was met by great media interest – Sixty Minutes ran an exlusive story on the NRDC report. Meryl Streep attended the Today Show, The Philip Donahue Show (10 million viewers) and Entertainment Tonight, accompanied by lengthy reports in People Magazine, Women’s Day, USA Today, and others. Newsweek and Time did additional stories, on both covers the same week – about the safety of the food system, with more coverage of the NRDC report.

Humans are very self-interested, I became interested in all these things when I was consciously feeding a baby and had a sense that everything you do is going to have an outcome further down the road. So I was very conscious to try to do the right thing and do well by our kids. Being naturally sort of slovenly, I had to sit up and pay attention, because I really think about my work most of the time, and I love that. When kids come into the picture, everything I read made me think “yes, you are right, you are right,” and everything we know now about the developing brain, young children, the first things even in utero that you introduce into their little fragile developing systems will bear an outcome later on. To get national attention and raise awareness in support of this initiative – which would provide clean air, water, and food in California – a television variety special called ” An Evening with Friends for the Environment” was produced in 1990 and broadcast on ABC. It starred Meryl Streep, Olivia Newton-John, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Cher, Lilly Tomlin, and Robin Williams.

The Kennedy Center opened to the public in September 1971. But its roots date back to 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed bipartisan legislation creating a National Cultural Center. To honor Eisenhower’s vision for such a facility, one of the Kennedy Center’s theaters is named for him. President John F. Kennedy was a lifelong supporter and advocate of the arts, and frequently steered the public discourse toward what he called “our contribution to the human spirit.” Kennedy took the lead in raising funds for the new National Cultural Center, holding special White House luncheons and receptions, appointing his wife Jacqueline and Mrs. Eisenhower as honorary co-chairwomen, and in other ways placing the prestige of his office firmly behind the endeavor.

Meryl Streep is an Honorary Committee Member of The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, which supports the development and presentation of the most promising new works by playwrights and regional nonprofit theaters nationwide. She has also participated in two Kennedy Center Honors, paying tribute to Helen Hayes in 1982 and to Mike Nichols in 2003 before becoming a Honoree herself in 2011.

On May 03, 2010, The Public Theater presented a one-night reading of Ariel Dorfman’s “Speak Truth to Power: Voices From Beyond the Dark”. The reading was presented by Dorfman, Kerry Kennedy, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and The Public. The star-studded cast included Marcia Gay Harden, Elias Koteas, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Aidan Quinn, Gloria Reuben, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, and Debra Winger. Proceeds from the reading would benefit the relief efforts of Habitat for Humanity in Chile.

Paul Newman founded the hole in the wall Gang in Connecticut in 1988 to serve 800 seriously ill children. The camp has been both widely acclaimed and oversubscribed, prompting Newman and others to launch the new programme in Europe. Incorporated as a limited company in 1992, the non-profit Barretstown Gang Camp replicates The Hole In The Wall Gang experience for European children. It was through Barretstown that Meryl Streep first supported the cause while filming “Dancing at Lughnasa” in Ireland. In November 2001, she was part of an all-star cast for a one-night-only performance of A. E. Hotchner “The World of Nick Adams” at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, alongside Matt Damon in the title role, Gwyneth Paltrow, Morgan Freeman, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Kline, Joanne Woodward, Brian Dennehy, Danny Aiello, Philip Seymour Hoffman and James Naughton. Some of the actors arrived in New York just a few hours before the show, so the director, Frank Corsaro, had little time for rehearsal, and the performers read their lines from the scripts. The biggest laugh was for a bit of dialogue between Ms. Streep and Ms. Roberts, who, playing drunken prostitutes in a railroad station from the story “The Light of the World,” were both apparently confronting their lines for the first time. “How can you say that?” Ms. Streep challenged Ms. Roberts at one point. Prepared to respond, Ms. Roberts looked down at the script. “Um,” she said, and then, with a comic flourish, turned the page.

On the day before the Emmy Awards in September 2004, Streep led an all-star cast in another benefit performance, this time at the Hole in the Wall Camp 15th annual Camp Fundraiser Gala in Ashford, Connecticut, where “My Fair Laddie”, A.E. Hotchner announced $1 million was raised for the camps program. Meryl Streep played Professor Higgins and singing, ‘Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman?”. The other cast members were Christine Baranski as Countess Pickering, Bruce Willis as the male Eliza Doolittle and Paul Newman played Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, dressed in a turn-of-the century driver’s outfit.

In October 2010, The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp was honored to join forces with the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps in hosting “A Celebration of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps” that brought together an outstanding line-up of Grammy-winning musicians, including Hilary Hahn, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, Keb’ Mo’ and Stevie Wonder with appearances by comedian Bill Cosby and actresses Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger. The performance took place at New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center before an audience of more than 2,200. Joining Streep onstage were kids from all over the world who have attended Hole in the Wall Gang camps, “which extend across America to the world – to Africa, to Asia, to lend to support to kids and families in over 50 countries,” said Streep. “Wow!!”

Formerly known as the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC), Healthy Child Healthy World was founded by James and Nancy Chuda in 1991 after their daughter Colette died from Wilm’s tumor – a rare form of non-hereditary cancer. Healthy Child is a national, non-profit 501(c) 3 organization headquartered in Los Angeles. Healthy Child is governed by an outstanding volunteer Board of Directors and distinguished group of advisors and is strengthened by community and corporate partners. Healthy Child is playing a leadership role in one of the most important public health and environmental movements of the 21st century.

At a 2002 Children’s Health Environmental Coalition fundraiser in Los Angeles, Meryl Streep, Nell Newman, and biochemist Lawrie Mott were all honored for their work in environmental health.

I am really proud of the achievements of Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC). And of Mothers and Others, which is the organization I formed, with my friends in Connecticut 20 years ago, in response to the National Resources Defense Council report on pesticides on fruits and vegetables and their effects on children. Before the Alar drama of 1989, I would say that most mainstream moms had no idea that a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables might contain certain substances that could cross the placenta and have an effect on their unborn children; or that once the child was born that toxins would enter their bodies through their breast milk; or that, once weaned, those little bodies taking in gallons of apple juice and mashed bananas and everything else might contain substances that might prove problematic later on in their lives. The thing that I came away with from the Alar controversy was that I realized I am not an activist. I can play one, but the lawsuits that followed me, the irate growers, the people who broke into my home – I was really very intimidated by all that. I’m really more like Julia Roberts than Erin Brockovich. But I realized I really am an activist. We are all activists every day that we make a purchase. We vote daily with our credit cards; we demonstrate with our dollars. Americans, mostly women, demonstrated that they cared what is on our food. We made the connection between what is on our food and our children’s health long before Congress enacted new regulations to protect our kids from pesticide residues.

Equality Now works for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women and girls around the world. Working with grassroots women’s and human rights organizations and individual activists since 1992, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support efforts to stop these abuses.

For over a decade, Meryl Streep has generously offered her time, brilliance and kind advice to Equality Now, an international human rights organization that works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world. Ms. Streep serves on the Advisory Council of Equality Now and has supported the group in countless ways and with stunning generosity. Ms. Streep has presided over many initiatives, such as moderating international press conferences calling for the participation of Afghan women in the reconstruction of their country and at the United Nations urging governments to repeal laws that discriminate against women. Ms. Streep has also spearheaded a number of fundraising events throughout the years for the organization. She organized an event auctioning the wardrobe of “The Devil Wears Prada” at a special screening and donated a portion of those proceeds to Equality Now and also raised considerable funds trading on the floor of the financial institution ICAP on their Charity Day, to name just two examples. Ms. Streep’s immense contributions to Equality Now reflect her outstanding commitment to human rights and equality for all.

Many thanks to Equality Now for submitting a summary of Meryl’s involvement for Simply Streep

Discover Jersey Arts (DJA) is a cosponsored project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and ArtPride New Jersey Foundation working in partnership with other cultural service organizations statewide including the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, South Jersey Cultural Alliance, New Jersey Network and New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism. The project’s mission is to increase the awareness of and participation in the arts in New Jersey.

Featuring a variety of television, radio, and print advertisments by New Jersey celebrities Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon,Avery Brooks, Bebe Neuwirth, and John Pizzarelli, along with Governor Christine Todd Whitmanand Secretary of State DeForest B. Soaries, Jr., their 2000 campaign was the most far-reaching effort ever topromote the arts in New Jersey.