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Ex-envoy Howard Dee among 2018 Ramon Magsaysay awardees
The Philippines' former ambassador to the Holy See & Malta is among this year's recipients of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.
Former envoy Howard Dee will receive the award this year along with Youk Chang of Cambodia, Maria de Lourdes Martins Cruz of East Timor, Bharat Vatwani and Sonam Wangchuk of India, and Vo Thi Hoang Yen of Vietnam.
Dee was honored "for championing the human face of peace, justice, and economic growth," according to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.
Dee served as ambassador from 1986 to 1990 under then-President Corazon Aqiuno.He was also the lead convenor in 1990 of the National Peace Conference.
From 1993 to 1999, Dee served as chairman of the government negotiating team talking peace with communist rebels. He also became a Cabinet secretary under the Office of the President in 2002 as adviser on Indigenous Peoples Affairs.
The awardees were announced on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Vatwani was cited for restoring health and dignity to troubled lives, Wangchuk for harnessing nature, culture, and education for community progress, and Vo Thi Hoang Yen for claiming opportunities for the differently abled.
Since 1995, Youk Chang has been working with the Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Project. As the head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk has collected and assembled a million documents, including a digital map of 23,000 mass graves, to ensure that the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge will not be forgotten. These documents, which served as a evidence in the Khmer Rouge War Crime Trials, will be the heart of Youk's new project Sleuk Rith Institute, a museum and research center.
In a Skype call during the announcement, Youk said that no one can escape from the past. However, he treasured the human ability to remember and said that the past should always be used as a guide for the future. "Rather than being pessimistic in life, I believe in the future," he said.
For her part, Cruz founded the Seculare Maun Alin Iha Kristu (ISMAIK) in 1989, a lay institute dedicated to uplifting the poorest of the poor through projects in healthcare, education, farming, and other self-help initiative.
Psychiatrist Vatwani in 1988 founded the Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation, motivated by the sight of an unkempt man drinking water from a street canal. Dr. Vatwani and his wife Smitha made it their life-long mission to rescue homeless mentally-ill persons. The foundation has provided aid for more than 7,000 people, a majority of whom were reunited with their family.
Wangchuk founded SECMOL in 1988 and Operation New Hope in 1994, two organizations focused on educational reform. Wangchuk helped develop a new curriculum that made subjects relevant to Ladakhi culture and context and teaching English to prepare students for higher education while also promoting the Ladakhi language. This curriculum was used in the school he opened in 1998.
Vo Thi Hoang Yenin founded the Disability Research and Capacity Development (DRD) in 2005, an organization that has since helped over 15,000 differently abled Vietnamese citizens by providing scholarships, skill-building workshops, and job placements among other initiatives. DRD actively works with the government and the business sector to improve PWD mobility and push for PWD-related policies.
Changed lives
Carmencita T. Abella, president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, described the work done by the 2018 awardees as a "defiant declaration of hope."
"We assert our belief that good is happening in the positive constructive power of greatness of spirit and its expression in moral leadership that upholds the moral good," Abella said.
In a meaningful celebration of 60 years of heroism, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation looked beyond the stories of the the awardees and turned the spotlight on the people whose live they bettered through their work.
The short film series, "Changed Lives," makes it clear that the awardees make a tangible, positive, rippling impact.
Among the awardees celebrated was Harish Hande, founder of SELCO India. Hande received the award in 2011 for improving the living conditions in marginalized communities in his country by providing renewable energy sources.
Hande spoke at the announcement ceremony and admitted to "misusing" the award by booking as many appointments with leaders as possible and making them uncomfortable enough and pushing them to make changes.
"You become the voice of the people who cannot speak," Hande said. "We need to create platforms to create hope, to inspiration, to wonderful solutions."
The Ramong Magsaysay Awards will be conferred officially to the new heroes of hope on August 31, 2018 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. —KBK/RSJ, GMA News
