Photo Flash: Lin-Manuel Miranda Honored by National Hispanic Foundation

Lin-Manuel Miranda was honored by the prestigious National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts organization to receive the 2008 Horizon Award for his work on the Tony award-winning musical IN THE HEIGHTS on Monday, September 8th in Washington D.C.
 
The National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts was created in 1997 to advance the presence of Latinos in the media, telecommunications and entertainment industries. The Foundation has concentrated in increasing access for Hispanic artists and professionals while fostering the emergence of new Hispanic talent.   The Hispanic community--which makes up 13.5 percent of the U.S. population, has become the nation's largest ethnic minority group--increasingly recognized for its potentially enormous consumer and political power. The entertainment industry has been making progress, but an enormous gap still exists before the Latino Community--38.8 million strong--are adequately reflected on both the small and big screen. Paradoxically, while the entertainment industry and its advertisers tap into the Hispanic community's resources, programming still falls short of the need to expand and present U.S. Latinos in a more modern and contemporary manner. The Foundation is the initiative of actors Jimmy Smits, Sonia Braga, Esai Morales and Washington, D.C. attorney Felix Sanchez. This omission deprives an entire community of a source of cultural pride and reality and the country-at-large of a true picture of the American mosaic.The Foundation's mission has two principal goals: to offer graduate scholarships to Latino students at prominent colleges and universities; and to expand career opportunities for existing talent in all aspects of entertainment and the performing arts.