Two community crusaders very well known to LINC will be honored Sunday as part of Kansas City’s tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Tara Raghuveer, who has become a champion of tenants’ rights, and long-time community activist Jim Nunnelly will receive the 2021 Evelyn Wasserstrom Awards at Kansas City’s annual MLK Jr Interfaith Service.

The service will be virtual this year, appearing live on Facebook, Jan. 10 at 2 p.m. on the event sponsors’ Facebook pages:

• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City.

• The Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee.

The Interfaith Service kicks off more than a week of events celebrating King through Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jan. 18.

Raghuveer is a Shawnee Mission East alum and Harvard graduate whose research into evictions led her to back to Kansas City to take on the cause of tenants’ rights, protecting vulnerable families from eviction and housing abuses, creating the non-profit advocacy organization KC Tenants.

As a researcher and analyst, Rhaguveer collaborated with LINC in the creating the KC Eviction Project. Among its work, the project has partnered with the Kansas City Public Schools and Legal Aid of Western Missouri to use housing court eviction data to help vulnerable families avoid eviction and strengthen school attendance.

Nunnelly was one of the architects of LINC’s Caring Communities service model. The career public health administrator was a civil rights activist from his college days protesting segregated diners as a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Nunnelly’s community activism included helping create the Jackson County Drug Court to help provide treatment-based intervention, and as a radio host giving voice to Kansas City youth, and advocating for health with his program, Plain Talk About Diabetes.

The service will also honor Operation Breakthrough, the non-profit created 50 years ago by Sister Corita Bussanmas and Sister Berta Sailer to provide quality child care for children of the working poor. Today the program serves hundreds of families.

The service will feature guest speakers the Rev. Dr. Traci Blackmon of the Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ and Rabbi Michael Zedek of the Temple B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City and the Congregation Emmanuel in Chicago.