Eduardo Jorge Anzorena

1994 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for International Understanding based in Japan. For over 30 years, Fr. Eduardo Jorge Anzorena has devoted himself to the perennial problem of slum life—secure and decent homes for squatters and slum dwellers. For ideas, Fr. Jorge met with groups working to improve housing in the slums of Latin America. He then embarked on his own study of the housing crisis in Asia, locating community organizers in the region's poorest neighborhoods and studying NGOs and people's organizations that worked. Then he began his annual travels to the cities of Asia— to search for innovative answers to the never-ending problems of slum life, to share his discoveries with other housing activists, and to steer needed financial assistance toward promising experiments. He launched SELAVIP, a bi-annual newsletter where he published the fruits of his travels. Here housing advocates could read about approaches being tried in Asia and Latin America, to organize communities and reduce the cost of housing, to bring new economic opportunities to the poor, and to arrange professional assistance and links to government programs. He and his network of members formally created the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights which mounts coordinated responses to mass evictions and works to define and achieve housing rights for Asia's poor.

Fr. Jorge still continues to give occasional seminars and lectures and despite his retirement, he continues to travel the world visiting low-income housing projects and sharing stories about housing the poor. His travels to Asia were so extensive that there is hardly a project, no matter how small, that he has not visited. He continues to publish the newsletter, SELAVIP, which chronicles his travels and stories of the activities of his countless friends in the world of housing. He also recently came out with a new book, “Housing the Poor in the New Millennium.”