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The 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government ServiceCITATION for Elsie Elliott Tu
Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
31 August 1976, Manila, Philippines
One of the last major colonial enclaves on earth, Hong Kong has a special public character. Committed to commerce above all else, the colony survives and flourishes because it offers facilities for all business comers. Where profit is the ultimate yardstick, inevitably many who have less will suffer. Such deprivation is compounded in Hong Kong by the pressure of inflocking refugees, mostly from China. In 30 years the population has grown from some 650,000 to nearly 5,000,000. The scramble for living in this congested manufacturing center and merchandise mart has severely strained the Judeo-Christian values basic to British law and administration.
Into this magnet for diverse humanity in 1951 moved ELSIE HUME ELLIOTT settling among the shacks of a squatter village. A Plymouth Brethren missionary for three years in China, she and associates opened for their Hong Kong neighbors an urgently needed simple clinic and school, starting with 30 pupils in an old army tent. Ultimately she left the rigidly evangelical mission society to save the school that had been registered in her name.
For a year, dependent on giving private lessons and teaching in other schools while tending her own, she lived on little else but bread and water until employed at Baptist College. Helped by a loan, student subsidies from government, and private contributions she now has five Mu Kuang English Schools providing kindergarten, primary and secondary education for some 4,000 poor children.
Education and welfare work involved her with Hong Kong's workers. In letters to the newspapers in Hong Kong and England, she exposed their long working hours, crowded living conditions and rampant tuberculosis. Mincing no words—where restraint was the rule—the dauntless English woman incurred enemies and criticism for attacking authority
Elected to the Urban Council in 1963, she became something of an unofficial ombudsman. In 1966 elements of the police, stung by her charges of corruption, sought unsuccessfully to accuse Mrs. ELLIOTTof paying children to throw stones while demonstrating. Four years later she called the administration to account for allowing police a "monopoly on corruption" with its Anti-Bribery Bill. It is to the credit of the Hong Kong Government and the press that the public record has since substantiated her charges and remedial action has been vested in an official Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Believing "the only way for self-fulfillment is to serve others," Mrs. ELLIOTT lived austerely in one room of a school building until 1972 when a benefactor donated better accommodation in the new building. She inspects her schools each morning and teaches 16 periods a week. As an Urban Council member she keeps "open office" twice weekly in two settlement blocks, handling over 300 complaints and appeals each month. Continuing to speak out and write for "those whose plight is most readily forgotten," she cites specific cases to illustrate shortcomings in housing, welfare services, playgrounds, bus service to crowded tenement areas, or licensing for hawkers. Supporters now include businessmen, government officers and academics who concede this soft-voiced, 62-year-old lady may sometimes be excessive in her challenges but performs invaluable service in mustering public opinion for public good in government.
In electing ELSIE HUME ELLIOTT to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes her crusade for justice, making the Hong Kong Government, of which she is an elected member, more responsive to the less affluent.
