Juanita Haugen Community Service Awards Announced

Pleasanton’s Community of Character Collaborative has named Greg Thome, JoAnn Weser, Bill Rudolph and the Alan Hu Foundation as its 2026 Juanita Haugen Award recipients. (pleasanton.org) (patch.com) The four honorees will be recognized at the group’s annual awards luncheon on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. at the Pleasanton Veterans Building. Tickets are $45 and the event is open to the community. (patch.com) (pleasanton.org) The luncheon will also recognize 14 Pleasanton Unified School District seniors receiving Juanita Haugen Memorial Scholarships. The Collaborative said this year’s student honorees include Aashvi Geddam, Advaith Anand, Andy Morales and 11 other seniors. (patch.com) (pleasantonusd.net) The awards are named for Juanita Haugen, a longtime Pleasanton school leader and public schools advocate who helped establish the Community of Character effort before her death in 2007. The organization says the awards program itself was established in 2008. (communityofcharacter.org) (hacienda.org) The program recognizes people and organizations tied to six values the group promotes in Pleasanton: responsibility, compassion, self-discipline, honesty, respect and integrity. Those values appear in schools, civic spaces and other city partnerships backed by the Collaborative. (communityofcharacter.org) (hacienda.org) Thome’s citation is the most detailed public description released so far. The Collaborative said his service in Pleasanton spans more than 40 years, including Catholic Youth Organization coaching, launching girls basketball, and nearly 20 years coordinating referees for the Special Olympics basketball tournament. (pleasanton.org) (patch.com) The Alan Hu Foundation brings a different kind of service record to the list. The Pleasanton-based nonprofit says it focuses on mental health awareness, stigma reduction and research support, and it was also named a 2025 California Nonprofit of the Year by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan. (alanhufoundation.org) The Collaborative says nominations for the awards are open to Pleasanton residents, volunteers working in Pleasanton, and organizations doing volunteer work in the city. For 2026, the nomination deadline was April 7. (communityofcharacter.org) That leaves the May 13 luncheon as both an awards ceremony and a fundraiser for the group’s scholarship and character-education work in Pleasanton. (business.pleasanton.org) (hacienda.org)