By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

Usually, humanitarian awards are given after decades of service to society. But freshman Sukanya Lahiri is ahead of her time.

Lahiri's commitment to helping young people has distinguished her as the first recipient of The National Conference of Christians and Jews Youth Award. She will be honored at the Conference's 69th Annual Greater Boston Region humanitarian awards dinner, which is being rescheduled to a future date. The ceremony was originally planned for Tuesday, April 1, when the winter's strongest snowstorm hit Boston.

The National Conference of Christians and Jews is a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization dedicated to fighting bias, bigotry, and racism in America.

Lahiri was one of four award winners; the others were Martha Crowninshield, general partner with Boston Ventures; the Rev. Ray Hammond '71, MD '75, pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church; and Thomas L.P. O'Donnell '46-47, JD '49, a partner with Ropes & Gray.

The award recognizes Lahiri's leadership activities that began during her high school years in Winchester.

She has been active in National Conference programs for four-and-a-half years, beginning as a facilitator of the INTO THE CIRCLE Teens Teaching Inclusion Program, which she expanded into the Winchester Public Schools. She was the 1994 Massachusetts delegate to the National Teen Summit in Ann Arbor, and in 1995, she was one of six delegates representing the U.S. in the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity program in Venice. In 1996, the National Association of Asian American Professionals presented her with its Significant Achievement and Future Leadership Award.

"One program I'd like to bring to Harvard is INTO THE CIRCLE, which reaches out to children and teaches inclusion by suggesting different ways of dealing with problems, such as biases," said Lahiri.

"I very much appreciate that The National Conference of Christians and Jews is recognizing youth," she said. "Just having a youth award says that adults recognize what young people can do."