URBANA — Champaign native A. Mark Neuman was selected for the 2011 University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Humanitarian Award.

He is the first person to receive the award since 2000.

He will be honored during the UI's homecoming ceremonies.

Mary Slater, senior director of alumni relation and special events, said the award is presented rarely, and because of the large pool Illinois draws from, even more rarely to Champaign-Urbana natives.

Neuman, who is single, spends about a quarter of his time abroad, a larger portion in Washington, D.C., and maintains a home in the Cherry Hills subdivision of Champaign.

The 49-year-old son of popular rabbi emeritus Sinai Temple Isaac Neuman, a Holocaust survivor, the younger Neuman said he grew up among the cornfields with a sensibility that eventually led him to Africa, where he works with impoverished women to market their textiles and earn a living.

Neuman graduated in economics in 1985.

He was nominated by two women involved in women-owned organic cotton cooperatives in West Africa, who attribute their success to "Neuman's vision and determination to secure a long-term customer" for their products.

In that last year, the cotton — produced by women who were once among the poorest — has created as many as 25 million garments sold in North America.

Neuman started the program five years ago.

Originally an aide to former Congressman Dan Crane, Neuman said he learned policy from inside the so-called Beltway and has applied it to minority businesses.

Neuman served on the executive staff of the Census Bureau in 1990 and was appointed chairman of the 2010 advisory committee, where he spoke out for Hispanic interests, including getting Spanish-language forms to native speakers.

He has also served on the USDA's Cotton Board and consulted for private clothing companies and as a counselor for international trade and global strategies for Limited Brands.

He said his Washington experience has helped him as an advocate.

"Working in government agencies helped me to learn how policy deliberations were made and how that can be put into use," he said.

Neuman said some of his most important insights about the problem of severe poverty include how to work toward creating sustainable incomes.

"Those incomes are game-changers in the lives of millions of the world's poorest people," he said.

An organic cotton program in Burkina Faso was the best way for the female farmers there to improve their income with the most net income to the farmer per hectare, he said. He said he always stresses sustainability, such as taking care of the soil — which a high school teacher once told him "wasn't dirt."

A "townie all the way," Neuman gives the UI credit for broadening his horizons.

Neuman was selected for the recognition by the board of directors of the LAS Alumni Association.