Vote now for the first round of 2019 Social Innovations Awards nominees

Well, Philly, you turned out: Yesterday’s midterm elections drew the biggest voting crowds in over two decades.

We’re gonna go ahead and stick with the silly election-time joke we make too often: For the next few weeks, you can exercise your love of voting again and again (!!!), because Social Innovations Journal’s third annual Social Innovations Awards are happening Jan. 24, 2019, and now is the time to pick the winners.

Here’s the thing about the voting process: You can vote in only a few categories per week, and then you can’t vote in categories that were featured in weeks past.

In other words, you snooze, you lose. These categories are open for voting right now, all in the human services field:

• Community behavioral health
• Gender equality
• Race equity and social justice
• Anti-violence
• Housing and community development

We recognize a bunch of names on the nominee list, such as Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project cofounder Lauren Fine, CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia Chief Commons Director Jamaine Smith, Pathways to Housing PA Executive Director Christine Simiriglia and Urban Affairs Coalition Senior Partnership Manager (and Generocity columnist) Tivoni Devor.

This first round closes on Sunday, Nov. 11, so get to it.

Check the Social Innovations website each week for future voting opportunities. Here are the other categories you can vote for, and when:

• Education (parent engagement, after-school, school collaboration) — Nov. 12 to 19
• Health and healthy food (healthy communities, healthy food access, health center/hospital or health insurance company), arts and culture — Nov. 26 to Dec. 2
• Public policy and systems change, law and legal practice, social mobility (workforce development, social enterprise intermediary, small business development) — Dec. 3 to 10