Ladakh in the northern India state of Jammu and Kashmir, is a high-altitude, cold desert region where some 300,000 people struggle in the midst of a harsh environment, wars arising from the rival claims of India, Pakistan, and China, and now even climate change.  Yet here the will to autonomy, creativity, and empowerment remains vibrant.

An inspiring example is SONAM WANGCHUK.  Born in the small, remote village of Ulaytokpo in Ladakh, one of many children of a local leader, he had a difficult education because minorities were discriminated against, schools were lacking and poorly-equipped, teaching standards abysmal, textbook content locally irrelevant, and the medium of instruction alien in the mountains.  Left mostly to fend for himself, he took control of his life early on.

He was a 19-year-old engineering student at the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar, Kashmir, when he went into tutoring to finance his schooling and help woefully unprepared students pass the national college matriculation exams.  Renting a hotel function room, he advertised a coaching program that, exceeding expectations, drew close to a hundred students.  Teaching basic subjects like English and Math, using strategies like peer-to-peer teaching, it was a financial success. But the experience also demonstrated to him how poorly educated the students in village schools were.

In 1988, after earning his engineering degree, WANGCHUK founded Students’ Education and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) and started coaching Ladakhi student, 95% of whom used to fail the government exams.  To create lasting impact, SECMOL partnered with local government in a joint program of educational reform.  Piloted in a village school, the program involved training teachers in a “creative, child-friendly, and activity-based” education; introducing curricular changes to make subjects relevant to the Ladakhi culture and context; prioritizing English over Urdu to better prepare students for higher education; and promoting the Ladakhi language.  Village education committees (VEC) were organized to support schools, monitor teacher performance, and become true stakeholders. Successfully piloted, this initiative of “localizing” schools was replicated in 33 schools and became a veritable movement.

In 1994, with WANGCHUK in the lead, “Operation New Hope” (ONH) was launched to expand and consolidate the partnership-driven educational reform program.  Taking a life of its own, to date ONH has trained 700 teachers, 1000 VEC leaders, and dramatically increased the success rate of students in matriculation exams from just 5% in 1996 to 75%  by 2015.  In 1998, WANGCHUK opened SECMOL School, with a permanent faculty, volunteers, and a yearly average of 300 students. An alternative boarding school that offers review, certificate, and associate-level courses, it rebuilds the students’ confidence, develops lifeskills, revisits the fundamentals and offers courses ranging from leadership training to solar power installation.  Also a model in its use of renewable energy and indigenous technology, SECMOL has produced students who have gone on to become pioneering entrepreneurs in different fields.

A natural innovator, WANGCHUK works out of local experience.  Seeing how climate change has affected the natural water supply for agriculture, he seized on the idea of building artificial glaciers in the form of “ice stupas” for irrigation during the dry summer. Called “stupas” (for public appeal in a Buddhist land), these are conically-shaped ice mountains, that store water in winter and in summer melts to supply farm irrigation water.

Six stupas he and his team have created store roughly 30 million liters of water. Beyond Ladakh, WANGCHUK has shared his environmental and educational innovations with mountain peoples across the whole Himalayan belt,  and as far as Switzerland.  Simple and non-confrontational in his leadership approach, SONAM WANGCHUK, continues to dream of ways to help the people of Ladakh. He confidently says, “The possibilities are endless.”

In electing SONAM WANGCHUK to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his uniquely systematic, collaborative and community-driven reform of learning systems in remote northern India, thus improving the life opportunities of Ladakhi youth, and his constructive engagement of all sectors in local society to harness science and culture creatively for economic progress, thus setting an example for minority peoples in the world.

I humbly accept this award, not as an individual but on behalf of all the students, teachers and people of Ladakh in the trans-Himalayas.

This award is a recognition to our efforts of the last 30 years to make education meaningful, applicable and contextual in our remote mountains and to make it available to all… rich, poor, rural and urban through government school system.

Unfortunately when it comes to education, the world is still stuck with a system that is three hundred years old when at the onset of industrial revolution, the focus was on exploiting nature for human need or greed. A kind of war was declared on nature and our schooling system unfortunately became a training camp for this plunder.

In this war we evaporated half of the forests on earth and half its wild life vanished in just the last 50 years. Nature, too, has responded with equal fury, unleashing cyclones, storms, droughts, floods and made our air unbreathable, water undrinkable, temperatures unbearable.

We suffer the consequences in the mountains of Ladakh, where the glaciers are disappearing, causing droughts and flash-floods.

At our school in Ladakh, we try and come up with measures to respond to climate change by sensitizing each citizen, arming the youth to build solar heated houses, build seasonal artificial glaciers to restore climate-damaged valleys.

Yet people ask in despair how will you scale it up globally? Where’s the money?

Whether we have resources for environment and education depends on how we look at it!  There seems to be no dearth of resources when it comes to defence and arms. The world spends 1.7 trillion dollars a year on defence. But defence in future will hardly be about India arming itself against China or China against the US.

It will have to be all countries pooling their budgets for defence—for defence against new environmental catastrophies and climate change.

Let me clarify this: in just one year the world loses 10 million lives to air pollution alone, (this is a rate similar to World Wars I & II) and half of these lives are lost in India and China. And it happens without a single bullet fired from across borders.

So don’t we need to invest in declaring peace with nature, by re-designing our education system to heal the planet and its people.

As a symbol of beginning this peace with nature I want to dedicate the prize money of this award to start an international model school in Ladakh where government and community join hands to prepare our children for these challenges of tomorrow.

Burdened by endemic poverty and a weak, corruption-ridden economy, the Philippines took a major shift in the 1990s when it pursued a policy of liberalized, export-led, globally competitive growth. A key component in this shift was the creation the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) to revive the country’s export processing zones, replacing the earlier agency which had failed dismally in boosting export-oriented investments. PEZA was placed under the leadership of a career public servant who, in over twenty-one years, has built the organization into a showcase of successful regulatory reform, a model institution of honest and committed public service, and a key contributor to the nation’s economic growth.

This public servant was LILIA B. DE LIMA. Born in Iriga City, Camarines Sur province, and raised in a family of public servants, her upbringing instilled in her the imperatives of integrity and the ideals of public service. Trained in law, she pursued a career in government, serving in various senior assignments until in 1995, she was asked to serve as PEZA’s first Director-General charged with promoting and regulating foreign investments in the country’s economic zones. Her first challenge was to regain the trust of investors grown skeptical of the country’s institutional capability and political will to spur economic growth. And her performance was ultimately to be measured by how increased investor trust would be converted into actual gainful employment for Filipinos nationwide.

Bucking tremendous pressures and threats, Director-General DE LIMA single-mindedly pursued a program of reform: she determinedly halved the bloated 1,000-person bureaucracy she had inherited from a system of political patronage; she developed PEZA’s work culture into one marked by honesty, efficiency and—quite literally—one-stop, nonstop service. Putting the right systems in place and leading by strict and consistent example, she gradually transformed a failed agency into a model of transparent, productive, and customer-friendly efficiency, one that the World Bank has cited for demonstrating “best practices” in ecozone management worldwide.

Under LILIA DE LIMA’s leadership, PEZA enabled the rise of the Philippines as one of the region’s top investment destinations. Among the radical policies that made this possible were a shift from government-financed to private sector-led ecozone development; streamlined 24/7 PEZA operations to reliably service global locators; investor-friendly regulations, purposeful interagency partnerships, and strengthened relations with local governments in the ecozones. Defying conventional wisdom, she successfully encouraged existing locators to expand operations despite the volatilities of the global economy.

During her term, PEZA’s accomplishments have been nothing short of spectacular. The number of PEZA ecozones increased by 2,000%, from the initial 16 she inherited to 343 by 2016; the number of registered enterprises rose from 331 to 3,756; investments reached PhP 3 trillion; and ecozone exports totaled US$ 629 billion. Also during DE LIMA’s tenure, PEZA remitted to the national treasury PhP 16.6 billion in corporate income taxes and dividends, and paid off the PhP 4.6 billion debt of its predecessor agency. What is most deeply gratifying to DE LIMA, who is acutely aware of the urgency of the problem of joblessness, is that PEZA has generated, in direct and indirect employment, some 6.3 million jobs for Filipinos.

In a world where there is rampant cynicism and real pain about how governments function, examples of public servants like DE LIMA and her PEZA team are especially impressive. And yet, reflecting on her career, she says: “I cannot solve the problems of the world but if in my own little area I can make a difference, then I must make that difference.” For all workers in government, it is a credo to follow.

In electing LILIA B. DE LIMA to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her unstinting, sustained leadership in building a credible and efficient PEZA, proving that the honest, competent and dedicated work of public servants can, indeed, redound to real economic benefits to millions of Filipinos.

I thank the Lord for this significant milestone in my life. Thank you most sincerely, Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation, for recognizing my work at the Philippine Economic Zone Authority or PEZA. Truly, this is a blessing to be awarded for work I enjoyed doing. My 21 years at PEZA was a privilege as it was a commitment. It gave me the opportunity to serve my country and help generate employment for our people. Thanks to the investors, who trusted in our capability to ensure that their operations can be set up at the soonest time and at the least cost undertaken with the PEZA hallmark brand of service—“One-stop shop, non-stop shop, no red tape, and no corruption.”

It wasn’t all a walk in the park. We inherited an extremely bloated bureaucracy. Trimming the fat by 60% was a long, torturous, and emotionally-draining process. It was the most bruising experience in my public career. Everything was thrown at me, but we did not waver and we cleaned up. As we strengthened the organization, we also instituted sweeping structural and policy reforms to remain competitive and address the ever-changing investment climate. All these paid off. PEZA gradually transformed into clean and efficient organization with highly-motivated, hardworking professional individuals. And I hope, I hope, they will continue to be so.

Our mantra from day one is absolute honesty and utmost service in all our dealings with our stakeholders. I am proud to have worked with my PEZAns, and with them I shared this award. I must likewise thank the investors—many of them I see here tonight.

The question most often asked is how I survived 4 presidents of different political persuasions and management styles. My answer is simple: Do your job with integrity and professionalism, and the bottomline will show it. It’s the best credential you can have and the only endorsement you will need.

But tonight, we honor the beloved president Ramon Magsaysay, who believed that a high and unwavering sense of morality should pervade all spears of governmental activity. I am reminded of his words of wisdom that remains as relevant today. And he said, and I quote, “I believe the president should set up the example of a big heart, an honest mind, sound instincts, the virtue of healthy and patience, and an abiding love for the common man. Guns alone are not the answer. We must provide hope for young peoples, for better housing, clothing, and food. And if we do, the radicals will wither away.”

Ramon Magsaysay has given us that heartbeat for humanity. What we have all been awarded for is in rhythm with the pulse that gleans towards what is right, what is just, what is good, and what is free to make ours a better world. This singular award, its salience and substance, and the precious memory it stands for, I shall forever treasure.

Building technology to serve the poor is a major challenge in the world today. Technology’s benefits must be brought to people, whatever their status, wherever they are, and in ways they can own and sustain. This is essential to promoting development, addressing poverty, and empowering communities.

For the past fifteen years, a small non-profit organization in the province of Negros Occidental, the Philippines has been addressing precisely this challenge. The ALTERNATIVE INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION, INC. (AIDFI) is a social enterprise that tackles the problem of rural poverty by designing, fabricating, and promoting environment-friendly technology which is accessible and income augmenting, for the poor.

AIDFI was initially born out of the social turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the sugar industry in Negros during the 1980s. Hundreds of workers and farmers were displaced and the survival of peasant families was severely threatened. In the wake of this crisis, a small group of social activists which included Auke Idzenga, a Dutch marine engineer, decided to form AIDFI to address the basic needs of the affected farmers. Agricultural production and technology development were their initial strategies, but meager funds and the loss of key members forced the organization to close down. When Idzenga returned to Negros in 1997, however, AIDFI was revived, this time with a clearer focus on innovating technology to help poor, rural families.

AIDFI’s first success came when it redesigned an ancient and largely abandoned technology called the ram pump. The ram pump uses the natural kinetic energy of flowing water from rivers or springs, to push water uphill without the use of gas or electricity. As reinvented by AIDFI, the ram pump can lift water to an upland reservoir, with a volume of 1,500 to 72,000 liters of water per day. Partnering with organizations and local governments, AIDFI does not only introduce machinery, but a whole “social package” which includes community consultation, training of village technicians, transfer of ownership of the water system to the community, and the organization of local water associations to manage the water generation and distribution system.

In introducing the ram pump system to upland communities that do not have easy access to water, AIDFI technicians are able to provide clean, cheap water for household use, livestock raising, aquaculture, and small-scale agriculture. Since reinventing the ram pump technology, AIDFI has fabricated, installed, and transferred 227 ram pumps that now benefit 184 upland communities in Negros Occidental and other provinces across the country. AIDFI has also brought the ram pump technology to help waterless upland communities in other countries; it is now carrying out complete ram pump technology transfer in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Nepal.

AIDFI continues to innovate on technology for the poor. To increase rural incomes, AIDFI has designed and fabricated an essential oil distiller that can process lemongrass into organic oil for industrial users. It transfers this technology to the farmers and provides packaging and marketing support, and a distribution network that now reaches other countries. Going even further, AIDFI has established a “technopark” in their office premises to actually showcase and demonstrate AIDFI-designed technologies that range from cooking and agricultural implements to a biogas plant and a windmill which can generate up to 800 watts of electricity.

In promoting grassroots enterprise, AIDFI has placed the premium on small-scale, accessible, low-maintenance technology that is customized for local needs, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and one owned and managed by the people themselves. Its struggle to exist as a viable organization has been most trying in both institutional and human terms, but AIDFI has pioneered a way that has already transformed the lives of thousands of rural families.

In electing ALTERNATIVE INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION, INC., to receive the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes their collective vision, technological innovations, and partnership practices to make appropriate technologies improve the lives and livelihoods of the rural poor in upland Philippine communities and elsewhere in Asia.

It’s a great honor for me and the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation to be here on the stage receiving Asia’s most prestigious award. It’s a crown on the hard work done by mostly silent heroes who come from the grassroots. We are very thankful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting us. This award will help spread our organization’s work faster. May I request all my colleagues to stand up and share the spotlight and then be fully energized.

For AIDFI this means developing the rural communities or, rather, cultivating communities. Young people in the uplands are losing interest in farming because of its low status. But with our essential oil project right in the middle of the mountains, we have proven that with innovative technologies and techniques beneficiaries feel proud and start cooperating again, a value long lost because of the need for economic survival. For these kinds of projects we need decentralized access to water and energy, preferably renewable energy. These require machines, which can be produced locally and lead to industrialization.

The AIDFI ram pump model is our flagship, and the only technology we have successfully elevated out of the pioneering stage. Now we have installation teams all over the country. We are also carrying out technology transfer to other countries: Afghanistan, Colombia and Nepal, with more to come. We have exported some ram pumps to Malaysia and Japan as well.

We believe our success is due to our passion, drive, consistency and hard work. All this despite the absence of government support. All our technologies could spin off into small factories or enterprises that can help provide basic needs and create employment in rural communities.

Development work is not easy at all in the Philippines context. Everything is strangled by politics.

Lately we encountered how a mishandled agrarian reform case of one member of our essential oil project resulted in the complete blockage of the factory, depriving 25 cooperative members of their livelihood for months. In defending this case I have also been called a troublemaker, received a Petition non Grata, even called a terrorist by a regional government official.

We in AIDFI have felt the fresh wind of this new government especially at the top. We have seen the serious concern of the agrarian reform secretary for our case. At the same time the Land Bank and the Department of Agriculture have shown serious interest in adapting our ram pump for irrigation. But we know it is still a long way to get this seriousness down to the lowest levels. National government cannot do this alone; strong cooperation with the academe and NGOs, among others, is vital. Government has the resources and NGOs like AIDFI have the grassroots connections, the passion and drive to work with the poor.

We also should rethink and see the opportunities in the uplands, areas long neglected. Unless we do this, the late Bishop Fortich, himself a Magsaysay awardee, warned, “the social volcano is going to burst.” My fondest hope is that our government will create an environment in which programs like ours can thrive. With the Filipinos’ great ability, the Philippines’ tremendous potentials, and strong cooperation among stakeholders, we can be a great nation.

And don’t worry. Despite the difficulties, AIDFI and I will remain at the service of the poor from the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia.