The 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

JAMES YEN saw the tragedy of illiteracy among his own people in France during the first World War, when he was beseiged by Chinese laborers seeking help in writing to their families at home. Returning to China in 1920, he began a career dedicated to educating rural people who had no opportunity for schooling and reeducating the educated to share in this task. Through the years, he labored, sometimes alone, from one disheartening disappointment to another lesson learned, in his quest for ways to help farm folk realize their own strengths.

The endeavors he has originated are milestones on the path of coping effectively with Asia's age-old problems of ignorance, poverty, official abuse and lack of confidence in themselves among ordinary citizens. The "Ting Hsien Experiment" in North China was the first of its kind bringing scholars to live and work with the rural people. To this the wartime and postwar community developments in West China's Szechuan Province were worthy successors.

The Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, launched on the mainland of China in 1948 and primarily responsible over the past decade for Taiwan's peaceful and successful rural revolution, was conceived in large measure by DR. YEN. UNESCO's Fundamental Education Movement in Southeast Asia has drawn much from his program.

In order that 30 years experience in China might be made helpful to other developing countries, JAMES YEN, in 1951, joined with friends in the United States to organize the International Mass Education Movement. After searching through Asia, Africa and Latin America, he chose the Philippines as a promising site where these lessons could be applied and an international center established to train rural leaders who would carry forward this pioneering work. A result is the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement which has begun to make a positive impression on life in the barrios it has reached. Stimulated in part by this private effort, the Presidential Assistant on Community Development, World Neighbors and other groups now are seeking to bring needed change to the rural areas.

DR. YEN's lifetime devotion to the cause he chose and the extraordinary talents cultivated in furtherance of this effort give expression to the ideals and spirit of service exemplified by Ramon Magsaysay. Born into a family of scholars, he has remained humble and at ease with the simplest of those whose lot he has sought to improve. These qualities have been translated into renewed faith and purpose by many who have worked with him.

At all levels, from chiefs of state to legislators, government administrators, businessmen, field workers, and village people, JAMES YEN has spread the seeds of his mass education ideas to Asian countries. He has become a citizen of the world, who, by his works, gives substance to the dream that one day men everywhere may freely enjoy security, equal opportunity and a sense of international brotherhood.

In electing Y. C. JAMES YEN to the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his sharing of experience and creative leadership in rural reconstruction and his bringing to East and West an awareness of the urgency for meeting the aspirations of the Asian farmer for a fuller life.

The Award Foundation particularly commends Dr. YEN's continuing concern for the whole man and molding his social institutions, rather than simply refashioning the physical environment.