The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends.

Twenty-two years ago, with twenty pesos and a battered typewriter, I founded the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development together with fourteen rural development practitioners to bring the dream of sufficiency to poor landless rural folk to reality. Virtually unknown, with no track record, and armed only with its incorporators' credibility and commitment, we envisioned to set-up a bank owned and managed by landless poor women. CARD received its first support in 1988 from the Asian Community Trust, then headed by Takayoshi Amenomori. During the initial years, we drew inspiration from Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank approach to poverty alleviation. After years of hard work with fellow incorporators-notably Dolores Mangubat Torres, now CARD Bank President and Lorenza de Torres Banez, Executive Vice President-the dream for a Landless People's Bank became a reality when CARD Bank was granted a license to operate as the country's first microfinance-oriented rural bank in 1997. In this journey, we were joined by Flordeliza Lanip Sarmiento, Executive Director of CARD NGO; Aristeo Dequito, now CEO of Business Development Services Foundation; and Elma Buedad Valenzuela, Associate Director of CARD NGO. They were CARD's pioneer staff, who also worked selflessly so that services will reach poor women in remote villages. Alexander Dimaculangan, General Manager of CARD Mutual Benefit Association, made sure that innovative social protection products are also made available to members.

In 2002, we adopted the ASA approach and attained unprecedented growth, thanks to the strong support of its founder, Shafiqual Haque Choudhury.

Listening to our members, we found out that loans are not enough; they need an outlet for their produce, a well-made structure they can call home, higher education for their children, small balance deposits to draw upon in times of emergencies, build assets, create wealth. Thus, with six independent institutions comprising the CARD Mutually Reinforcing Institutions or CARD MRI, we offer members with a broad range of financial and non-financial products and services.

The Nanays are at the center of our mission; they define our very own existence. We believe that increasing their access to financial and nonfinancial services will lead to economic empowerment. But more than access to resources, we maintain that control over these resources is even more empowering, leading to increased well being for themselves and their families, and to wider social and political empowerment. Translating this belief into action, many of our Nanays are now stockholders of CARD Bank. The Mutual Benefit Association, presently providing insurance coverage to more than two and a half million low-income Filipinos, is fully owned by our Nanays. Of CARD MRI's 3,600 employees, one third are sons and daughters of our Nanays, who evidently have severed the bondage of intergenerational illiteracy. We will ensure that the management of CARD MRI is passed on to their hands, and that their generations witness the end of poverty for their families.

May I request the CARD MRI delegation to stand to be recognized.

It is with great honor that I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award on behalf of the CARD MRIs' boards, whose expertise enriched us; the management and staff and their families, whose sacrifices sustained us; our partners, whose trust buoyed us; and finally, my late father, Jose de Castro Alip, who believed that a son's dream can come true.