To receive this award is the greatest honor. I feel very lucky.

Many years ago I was sent by the Japan Overseas Christian Medical Service to Nepal. For eighteen years, I worked among the rural people there; I treated their sick, learned their culture, and set up grassroots programs to control tuberculosis in the most remote villages.

By working closely with these rural people, I came to see that disease and poverty were linked in a vicious circle that enlarged the gap between rich and poor. And I came to see that, in poor countries, this same vicious circle often undermined the stability of the political order and thus caused even more misery. Over the years, I observed this not only in Nepal but in several other countries in Asia and the Third World.

How can this hateful chain of poverty, disease, and disorder be eliminated? I asked myself this question. And I posed it to others such as Dr. Krasae Chanawongse of Thailand and Dr. Juan Flavier of the Philippines. It seemed to me—to us—that donations of money and materials to poor people did not get to the heart of the problem, especially when these donations were channeled through governments and large aid-giving agencies. The real solution to improving living conditions and livelihoods among Asia’s rural poor was self-reliant development. Individuals and communities had to learn to act for themselves. And for this to happen, effective and committed community leaders were indispensable.

This is why, in 1985, I founded the International Human Resources Institute (IHI) in Tokyo. Since then, IHI has been providing promising youths from Nepal, Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines the opportunity to develop themselves as community leaders. We help them through advanced training at two branches of the University of the Philippines—the College of Social Work and Community Development in Diliman and the College of Agriculture in Los Baños—as well as at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in Cavite. During two years of living and studying together, the IHI Fellows also share their cultures, habits, and ways of life with each other.