Keynote Presentation
Presented by: Larry Charles, Executive Director, ONE/CHANE, Inc.

Larry Charles has served as Executive Director of ONE/CHANE, Inc. (Organized North Easterners and Clay Hill and North End, Inc.) of Hartford, Connecticut, since 1993 and has organized over $21 million in development in north Hartford alone over the past eight years. This includes affordable, high quality, ownership housing for working poor families and a new $11.4 million day care center for the Mt. Olive Church. ONE/CHANE is a nonprofit community-based organization serving the poorest section of the City of Hartford. Its mission is to rebuild targeted communities to make them more sustainable through community organizing, affordable housing development, employment/training, youth services and economic development. ONE/CHANE’s success has led to the opening of offices in South Africa five years ago, Louisiana three years ago, and Bridgeport, Connecticut just two months ago.
Mr. Charles is Vice President of the Connecticut Rivers Council of the Boy Scouts of America, Treasurer of the Board of Directors of Hartford Behavioral Health, a community mental health agency, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Long Island Soundkeeper Fund. He serves as a member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC) Executive Committee and the International Subcommittee. He is chair of a work group developing environmental justice principles for U.S. based multinational corporations operating in foreign countries. Mr. Charles is a graduate of Southern University in New Orleans and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. He served as the national chair for the Leadership Development Institute for minority high school students in America.