Awardee Updates

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapkase conferred on Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne (Sri Lanka, Community Leadership, 1969) the Sri Lankaabhimanya (Pride of Sri Lanka), the country's highest civil honor, in recognition of five decades of service to the poor and commitment to non-violent transformation of societies, through the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, which he founded. Judge Christopher G. Weeramantry also received the award in a ceremony at the Presidential Secretariat. Other recipients include former Presidents Ranasinghe Premadasa and D.B.Wijethunga, Dr.Lestor James Peiris, the late Lakshman Kadirgamar and internationally known science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Dr. Ariyaratne has previously received the Gandhi Peace Prize (India), Hubert H. Humphrey Award (USA), Niwano Peace Prize (Japan), and the King Baudouin Award for International Development (Belgium).

Chung To (China, Emergent Leadership, 2007) is one of the recipients of the first Hong Kong Humanity Award, presented by the Hong Kong Red Cross to professionals and volunteers who have shown compassion and humanity to the vulnerable. Chung put up the Chi Heng Foundation, the only charitable organization that focuses on AIDS orphans. In an interview with local media, Chung said the award would further raise awareness of the children's plight and show the world that Hong Kong is not just about making more money but also caring for others. It's a good example to the youth, he said.

For the first time, Thailand's Prince Mahidol Award is conferred on a Nepali, Dr. Sanduk Ruit (Nepal, Peace and International Understanding, 2006), who saves a hundred patients a day from blindness through his five-minute suture-less cataract surgery. The award, named in honor of the doctor prince, is given to outstanding individuals or institutions in medical, public health, and human services anywhere in the world. King Bhumibol Adulyadej conferred the award, which comprises a medal, a certificate and a purse of US$50,000. Ruit is medical director of Tilganga Eye Center, which also manufactures inexpensive high-quality intraocular lenses. He is at the forefront of a campaign to eliminate blindness in the Himalayan region by 2020. Two other doctors, from Australia and Germany, received the award.

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy presented the 2007 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award to Dr. Cynthia Maung (Burma, Community Leadership, 2002), director of Mae Sot clinic, located at the Thai-Burmese border. In presenting the award, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian remarked that Maung and the Burmese people serve to remind the world "of the arduous road to democracy." Named one of Time magazine's Asian Heroes, Maung trains "backpack medics," heroic doctors who go back and forth across the border to treat patients who have sought refuge in the Burmese jungle. Herself an exile for two decades, she denounced the military junta as the source of the problem. "There is no opportunity for improvement or change under the military regime," she said in her acceptance speech.

Jesuit priest James Reuter (Philippines, Journalism, Literature, Creative Communication Arts, 1969) received the Jorge Barlin Golden Cross Award for outstanding service to the Catholic Church. The award, given by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), is named in honor of the bishop who became the first ecclesiastical and political head of a Philippine province, Sorsogon (1989). Reuter, who has lived in the Philippines for nearly seven decades, established the Family Rosary Crusade with the late Fr. Patrick Peyton. He also helped set up what is now known as the Catholic Media Network (CMN). The CBCP spokesman during the Marcos regime, Reuter received a special award from visiting Pope John Paul II in 1981 for his outstanding service to the Church in mass media.

For $1 a month each, Nepalese in the United States can help build an information highway in their native land. The campaign was launched by visiting countryman, Mahabir Pun (Nepal, Community Leadership, 2007), who delivered a speech at his alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and received an honorary degree in humanities. He addressed 10 other Nepalese organizations in various universities in seven U.S. states. In Japan, several organizations offered to help build a new wireless network connecting six districts between Kathmandu and Pokhara, Pun told Carmencita Abella of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in a letter.

More than 100 youth leaders from different colleges and universities in the Asia-Pacific got the chance to interact with three Magsaysay Award winners during the 1st Future Leaders of Asia Forum, held at the Ateneo de Manila University. The three are Jovito Salonga (Philippines, Government Service, 2007), Sister Eva Maamo (Philippines, Community Leadership, 1997) and Benjamin Abadiano (Philippines, Emergent Leadership, 2004). The forum theme was "Social Entrepreneurship: Developing a New Generation of Asian Leaders." Social entrepreneurship basically refers to innovative, skills-based approaches to solving social problems.

Former Senator Jovito Salonga (Philippines, Government Service, 2007), launched a book, Not by Power or Wealth Alone, at the kick-off of the University Christian Life Emphasis Week at Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Philippines. He also delivered the keynote address, "Growing in Christ: Living by the Truth and in Love." Of Salonga's book, Philippine Chief Justice Reynato Puno wrote that it inspires readers to search their inner selves "to find the strength which comes not from worldly wealth or power, but from the Cross on which hung a most loving God in all his frailty and glory."

For his effective management style, Mayor Jesse Robredo (Philippines, Government Service, 2000) of Naga City, Philippines, is featured in the book, Frontline Leadership: Stories of 5 Local Chief Executives, published by the Ateneo School of Government. The book cites his managerial skills and fiscal acumen as being pivotal to Naga's economic boom. One of his innovations is the Naga City People's Council, a federation of Naga-based non-governmental organizations, which acts as a check to the local government. He has also harnessed technology to promote efficiency and transparency by uploading to the city's official website the city's systems, business licensing procedures and other transactions. Above all, a book reviewer cites as his most outstanding trait his "eternal compassion" for the poor and the ordinary citizens, which "sends the message that when one succeeds, one does not leave behind or forget those who have no power."

Dr. P. K. Sethi (India, Community Leadership, 1981), inventor of the Jaipur foot, the affordable prosthesis that enables amputees in developing countries lead normal lives, has succumbed to cardiac arrest. He was 80. He is survived by his wife, Sulochana, one son and three daughters. An orthopedic surgeon, Sethi came up with the invention after years of research and "with the help of Ramachandra Sharma, a semiliterate craftsman who had been teaching lepers to make handicrafts and who became his assistant," according to a New York Times article. The Jaipur foot costs $30 and is available in more than 25 countries, although it is not patented. Sharma now works for a Jaipur-based charity that mass-produces and distributes the foot to poor people. The son of a physics professor, Sethi was born in 1927 in Benares (now Varanasi), India, and completed his medical education in India and Britain.

Social worker Murlidhar Devidas Amte (India, Public Service, 1985) has passed away. He was 94. Although trained in law, he devoted his life to rehabilitating leprosy patients in India. After attending a leprosy orientation course at Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, he started the Anandwan (Forest of Joy) commune for leprosy patients with his wife Sadhana, two sons and six patients. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described him as ''a Gandhian of our times.'' The Dalai Lama described his work as "practical compassion, real transformation and the proper way to develop India." To the thousands of lepers he has helped, he was a saint and a god. A native of Maharashtra, Amte had been fighting injustice and discrimination since his youth. In addition to the Magsaysay Award, he received many humanitarian and environmental awards, among them the UN Human Rights Prize, the Templeton Prize, and the Gandhi Peace Prize.