The Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation has selected Mark Swann ’84 as one of 20 national finalists for an award honoring “those ordinary Americans who become extraordinary through their indomitable courage and selflessness.”

Swann was selected from hundreds of nominations nationwide for the Citizen Service Before Self Honor for his decades of helping the homeless in Portland, Maine. In 1991, following the closing of a handful of local shelters, Swann led a collaborative effort to build the Preble Street Resource Center. The center provides the homeless not only with shelter and food, but also with medical and social services to treat mental illness, addictions and physical ailments.

As executive director of Preble Street Resource Center, Swann oversees a hub of programs: three soup kitchens, a food pantry, medical clinic, day shelter, social services, a housing location program, a homelessness prevention program and a teen center.

In 2001, Swann received Bowdoin’s Common Good Award, which honors alumni who have demonstrated an extraordinary, profound, and sustained commitment to the common good, in the interest and for the benefit of society, with conspicuous disregard for personal gains in wealth or status.