Food sufficiency, environment conservation, local autonomy, social equity—these are urgent, bedrock concerns today. These challenges are addressed by governments, development agencies, multilateral organizations, and other institutions, but we have also seen that the most meaningful, impactful actions often come from the ground, from local communities and the people themselves.

An inspiring example is the story of fifty-one-year-old Eugenio Lemos of Timor-Leste. Lemos lived through the turbulent years of his country’s struggle for independence, that saw the Indonesian invasion and the bitter civil war that marked the country’s emergence as a fully independent nation in 2002. Such difficult beginnings devastated the economy, leaving 40% of the country’s mostly rural population living below the poverty line. For Lemos, born to a family of farmers, it was a tragic time as well. He lost his father and siblings during the war and had to help his mother in farm work at an early age. It would be his life.

He studied agriculture in a local university and took up such activities as starting a group to promote organic farming. In 1999, an Australian permaculture trainer, who was in Timor-Leste to train farmers in sustainable agriculture, introduced Lemos to permaculture, a holistic system for creating and managing sustainable agrosystems. It was not simply about transferring technologies but the cultivation of an ethos of responsible relations to nature and people, expressed in the words “earth care, people care, and fair share.” Lemos saw that many elements of this system were already present in traditional Timorese culture and he resolved that this was something he would devote himself to promoting among his people.

In 2001, Lemos established Permakultura Timor-Lorosa’e (Permatil). It has three main programs. A Youth Training Program that organizes three-day camps for youth seventeen years old or older, involving learning-and-fun activities in water and natural resource management, farming, aquaculture, and agroforestry. (Another camp for kids twelve to sixteen was later added, with simpler activities like gardening and preparing organic food.)

A School Garden Program implemented in public primary schools in which students tend vegetable gardens and learn composting, natural pest control, seed selection, and other skills. There is also a Water and Natural Resource Management Program that promotes “rainwater harvesting” by building ponds, swales, and terraces that store water, recharge aquifers, and regenerate springs.

Since 2008, the youth camp has trained more than 5,000 youth across the country. The School Garden  Program  has  been  established  in  more  than  250 schools and, since 2015, has been integrated in the national  public  school  curriculum.  Permatil’s  Water  and  Natural  Resource Management Program has been introduced in all thirteen administrative districts of Timor-Leste. More than 1,000 water collection ponds have been built and 300 springs revived, benefitting over 400,000 residents or almost a third of the country’s population.

Charismatic, Lemos works with people from all walks of life—they are drawn by his open, humble, down-to-earth manner. Very much in character, he is an activist, a song writer and a singer who uses his songs as a medium to communicate the social issues he cares about. More than just about methods and techniques, Lemos promotes a whole way of looking at nature and people, particularly among the young. Taking time off for a scholarship in 2008-2010, Lemos earned a master’s degree in community development in Australia. What defines him today is that he is proud and respectful of his culture, grounded in local realities, and draws deeply from traditional knowledge what he finds essential to living. He insists, for instance, that what is needed is not simply “food security” or access to food (often commercial and imported) but “food sovereignty,” the country’s capacity to produce its own food, placing the premium on what is local, natural, and nutritious. Still, Lemos is mindful that what he is doing has lessons beyond Timor-Leste. He says, “My message to people—especially leaders of every country—is, think wisely. Don’t think only of how to create benefits for business without thinking about the impact on the environment. As world citizens, everything we do has an impact on others. We have one atmosphere, one water, one air.”

In electing Eugenio Lemos to receive the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his indomitable spirit in uplifting the lives of local communities, his vision and passion in integrating local and indigenous cultures in his advocacy for the care of the environment and the well-being of people; and for being truly a man of and for his people, and thus for the world as well.

Lokraik diak.

First of all, I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for electing me to receive Asia’s premier prize and highest honor, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

As we all know, man’s impact on our Mother Earth is at a critical crossroads, with many factors severely damaging our natural resources – our agricultural and terrestrial lands, and our marine and aquatic resources. Because of this, the food sovereignty of every country is currently under threat.

For many generations, humans have plundered Mother Earth’s resources in the name of capitalism, and in doing so we have robbed future generations – our own children and children’s children – of water security, of food sovereignty and of a life free of climate change.

The future that they face – a life filled with uncertainty, dangers, threats of displacement and extreme weather events is something I feel extremely concerned about. It is something that we all should be concerned about.

With today’s geopolitics of the current wars between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine worsening the global food production and availability, many millions of people will go hungry and suffer from lack of access to quality, nutritious food and clean drinking water.

But through environmental advocacy, skills training and awareness-raising of ecosystem literacy, permaculture and traditional knowledge, we can build new generations of citizens who have the understanding, capacity, and confidence to effectively tackle climate change and its effects.

Young people of the world are key to achieving sustainable development and restoring the long-term viability of our environment across the globe. It is essential that all young people receive equal access to quality education and training, to social justice and quality health services, to protection from violence and abuse and to opportunities for employment and meaningful participation in society.

So, I ask all of us to make a commitment, to join forces and to act together in stopping the causes of climate change and ecosystem destruction. The time to mobilize everyone especially the youth of the world to rise above the environmental challenges ahead is now.

Permatil (Timor-Leste) and Permatil Global are committed to engaging all youths in the practice of permaculture through the PermaYouth in Action movement. This will grow new environmental leaders and equip youth to share the knowledge and skills with their communities. Knowledge and skills to rehabilitate environments, become water, seed, land and food resilient and implement climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The impact we can create together will not only restore local environments and offer sustainable local livelihoods but will multiply and spread far and wide – increasing the wellbeing of our communities, entire countries, and our planet, now and into the future.

The change begins with all of us. The time to do so is now.

Permaculture. Everyone. Everywhere.

Obrigado barak!

In times of great uncertainties, danger, and stress, mental health becomes an issue of public concern. Yet, the problem does not quite get the needed response in terms of public health programs, facilities, and services. In this context, the initiatives taken by private individuals and organizations are extremely important.

An inspiring example is that of fifty-four-year-old Cambodian psychiatrist SOTHEARA CHHIM. He was only seven-years-old when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia in 1975 and forced the people of Phnom Penh and other cities to rural camps for a regimen of slave labor and reeducation. Children, like CHHIM, were separated from their parents to work in these camps. It took more than three years before CHHIM was reunited with his family when Phnom Penh was liberated in 1979.

Amid the psychological devastation wrought by a genocidal rule that claimed 1.7 million lives, CHHIM studied medicine at Phnom Penh’s University of Health Sciences and was among the first Cambodian psychiatrists to graduate after years of war. The challenge that faced CHHIM was forbidding. It is said that 40% of Cambodians suffer from mental health problems. Yet, even today, the resources needed to address the problem are direly lacking. Only 2% of health centers and 59% of referral hospitals offer mental health services to outpatients. There are only two psychiatric inpatient units with a total of fourteen beds to serve a country of about 15 million.

In 2002, CHHIM assumed a leading role in mental health as executive director of Cambodia’s Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO). (The organization started as a branch of Netherlands-based TPO International but became an independent organization in 2000.) TPO Cambodia is the largest non-government organization in the field of mental health care and psychosocial support in Cambodia. Based in Phnom Penh, it has more than forty medical professionals and staff and has satellite offices in four provinces. It is guided by these principles: it is community-based, psychosocial (takes mental health in the context of community and society), capability-building (empowers people to survive and thrive), and integrative.

TPO worked on the “Truth, Trauma, and the Victims of Torture” project at the time the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was investigating the Cambodian genocide (CHHIM took part as an expert witness). TPO conducted treatment and training in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in tandem with Documentation Center of Cambodia, the organization devoted to documenting the genocide. As a method of trauma assessment and treatment, TPO practiced “testimonial therapy,” a localized version of an internationally recognized treatment method developed for PTSD cases resulting from mass, organized violence. With the help of therapists, survivors put into writing their traumatic experiences. A formal testimony is produced, which is then presented by the survivor in a public ceremony presided over by a monk. It is a ritual with healing, spiritual effects. At this time, CHHIM also developed the Cambodian concept of baksbat (broken courage), a post-traumatic state of fear, passivity, and avoidance. Deemed more nuanced and appropriate to the Cambodian experience than “post-traumatic stress disorder,” it is now used by TPO for trauma assessment and treatment.

TPO-Cambodia’s activities include gender-based violence counseling for victims of rape, forced marriages, and other forms of violence against women; a hotline service that provided counselling and referrals during the Covid-19 pandemic; and Operation Unchain, which provided treatment to mentally-ill patients locked up or chained at home and educated families on how to better care for these patients. The TPO Clinic in Phnom Penh has served thousands of patients. It is not, however, the center of CHHIM’s work. CHHIM says: “When I work in the clinic, I see only individuals, one to one with a patient. When I’m in the community, I see the people, the whole family, and the community.” This is where the mental health worker should be.

In electing SOTHEARA CHHIM to receive the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his calm courage in surmounting deep trauma to become his people’s healer; his transformative work amidst great need and seemingly insurmountable difficulties, and for showing that daily devotion to the best of one’s profession can itself be a form of greatness.

I am still in disbelief to be here in Manila to receive Asia’s most prestigious prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

This Award is very special to me on both a professional and personal level.  It is an acknowledgment of the work that my organization, Transcultural Psychosocial Organization-Cambodia, have done to alleviate the suffering of the Cambodian people from trauma and mental health problems over the past decades.

As Cambodia’s history has shaped my career path, please allow me to quickly share with you my own personal history.

I was born into a family of architects.  Since childhood, I have dreamt of becoming one and to build a skyscraper in Phnom Penh.  My dreams and plans were shattered when the Khmer Rouge regime reigned in Cambodia for three years, eight months and twenty days.  During this regime, the intellectuals in the country were brutally murdered with only 40 doctors surviving. We felt traumatized and demoralized. We Cambodians were all living in deep trauma and with baksbat, literally meaning “broken courage.”

Given our dire situation, my mother insisted that I study medicine and become a doctor.  There is a great need to help save people’s lives.  Thus, I stopped pursuing my own dream and decided to be an obedient son.

As a young doctor in remote areas, I saw the great need for psychosocial help.  I realized that this was perhaps my calling, to provide much-needed psychosocial care to my countrymen, especially those in the rural areas.

My organization, TPO-Cambodia, offers mental health services to hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.  Through our tireless efforts, the stigma on mental health has been reduced; and now more people seek mental health care.

This Award comes with a prize money.  I am donating all of this to TPO’s initiative, “Operation Unchain Project,” to continue to treat and unchain more patients who are in  need of help.  I will continue to implement this project until there are no more patients chained in the country.

I can stand before you today without hesitation to say that I have no regrets in following my mother’s advice.  She has always taught me to do the right thing.  After all, she named me “Sotheara” which means gentle, humble, kind, and compassionate.  I hope that I have lived up to this name.

Words cannot express my sincerest gratitude to be given the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

But please allow me to thank the Foundation for this great honor.

I would like to thank my wonderful TPO family, who have been working with me in this advocacy.  Forty-three of them are here today to celebrate with me.

I also wish to thank my Filipino professor, Dr. Cornelio Banaag, who taught me psychiatry in Phnom Penh 26 years ago.

And most importantly, I would like to thank my family, especially my beautiful, beloved wife Chantara, and my two children–Chan Charia and Chan Oussa–who are always by my side in my life. Without their support, I will not be able to do this work.

I wish everyone in Asia the five precepts of Buddha: Longevity, Beauty, Health, Strength, and Wisdom.

Being an archipelago in the heart of the Coral Triangle, the global center of marine diversity, it is not surprising that the Philippines is one of the top fish-producing countries in the world. Yet, the tragic irony is that fishermen—particularly municipal fishermen, who constitute 85% of over 1.6 million people employed in the fisheries sector—are among the poorest labor groups in the country. Traditionally unorganized, small-scale, with meager assets and access to outside assistance, they have suffered over past decades as their life-sustaining resource, the marine environment, is severely degraded.

One 53-year old fisherman has broken the mold by leading his community in preserving the coastal environment that has been the life-source for generations of fishing families. He is ROBERTO BALLON (fondly called “Ka Dodoy”). His Visayan parents migrated to the village of Concepcion in Kabasalan, Zamboanga Sibugay province in Mindanao, when he was in his teens. KA DODOY knew the realities of diminishing fish harvests in once rich fishing grounds; how his father, like other village fishermen, would spend long hours at sea and come home earning barely enough to buy rice for the family. Poverty prevented KA DODOY from going to college; so he knew he would have to “go back to the sea.” Having started his own family, he had to take command of the situation he was in.

In 1986, DODOY and thirty other fishermen started Kapunungan sa Gagmay’ng Mangingisda sa Concepcion (KGMC), or Association of Small Fisherfolk of Concepcion. Seeing how rampant fishpond conversion was, and how the abandonment of these fishponds when the business collapsed had destroyed the mangrove forests, KGMC decided to focus on mangrove reforestation. With little help and meager returns (since the benefits of reforestation are not felt quickly), the association saw its members dwindle to just three but KA DODOY, the association chairman, persisted.

Their perseverance attracted government support, reaching a milestone in early 2000, when the fishermen were granted tenurial rights to the reforested land under a government forestry co-management program. The fifty hectares they replanted by 1994 had expanded to five-hundred hectares of mangrove forests in 2015. What was once a desert of abandoned fishponds is now an expanse of healthy mangrove forests rich with marine and terrestrial life. Fish catch has improved dramatically from 1.5 kg per fishing trip of eight hours to as much as    7.0 kg in three-to-five hours of fishing. The improvement in the fisherfolk’s quality of life has been evident in their ability to buy a boat engine or simple household appliances and send their children to school.

From a handful members in the 1980s, KGMC now has a membership of 320 households. The group’s success led to other projects. In partnership with the municipal government, KGMC members were deputized to conduct the local Bantay Dagat or Sea Patrol volunteer program, aimed at protecting municipal waters from illegal fishing and mangrove logging. They have also attracted partnerships with development institutions in livelihood and social enterprise projects like oyster production, shell and crab culture, and seaweed farming. KGMC’s initiatives have been replicated in other towns in Zamboanga Sibugay and even beyond. These and other changes have given new life to Kabasalan, now regarded as the seafood capital of the province and an ecotourism destination.

The key mover in this transformation is DODOY BALLON. His exceptional dedication to serving others and self-sacrificing leadership that puts the group’s interest before his own have transformed his community. When KA DODOY and his fellow fishermen were starting out and it seemed like there was no one to help them but themselves, he said: “Our families depend on the sea for our survival, not on politicians or other people, so it is only right that we make its protection our priority.”

In electing ROBERTO BALLON to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his inspiring determination in leading his fellow fisherfolk to revive a dying fishing industry by creating a sustainable marine environment for this generation and generations to come, and his shining example of how everyday acts of heroism can truly be extraordinary and transformative.

“Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.” These words from Pope Francis in his encyclical letter – Laudato Si exemplify the choices I made and continue to make, as an ordinary fisherman – to dauntlessly see riches from ridges to reef and thereby choose to rise, to choose what is good, and to choose to make a new start. By God’s grace, standing before you at this moment, remind me of these humble choices that yielded fruits and even earned international recognition.

I am profoundly honored and pleased to be chosen as one of the Awardees of the most prestigious award in Asia, in honor of the legacy of the late Pres. Ramon Magsaysay. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I will be counted among the array of great community leaders to be recognized by the Foundation.

As a simple fisherman, I only have one desire for the community that makes me do what I have been doing: to offer myself to help provide a better environment, sustainable livelihood, and an empowered community to realize our vision and mission in life – that is, to have 3,8…agahan, tanghalian at hapunan, tatlong kainan in English, breakfast, lunch, dinner, so 3 eat.  If we have 3 eat, 3 meals in a day, I believe we would be content.

But more than this, I see a hunger that not even three full meals could satisfy.  Day after day, I see the need to strive for progress, to live a harmonious life propelled by a sustainable and equitable co-existence in the coastal vicinities of Zamboanga Sibugay. This has always been our aspiration as municipal fisherfolks together with our government and other stakeholders in preparation for a better and productive environment for the next generations.

Because of this Award, I am exceedingly grateful and hopeful that this platform could be a great mechanism to help our poor fisherfolk sector attain more leverage to sustainably manage our coastal resources. Through this stage, I am advocating my fellow fisherfolk in the entire archipelago that this initiative will not stop with this award but will serve as a vehicle to sail smoothly and navigate towards sustaining our natural wealth.

What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up? Asks Pope Francis using the lenses of the same encyclical. Today and in the years to come, we respond to the daunting task of making the earth truly a home. To my fellow fisherfolks, let us help our government by keeping our coastal habitat protected and sustainably utilized.

1. Let us support our fishery program while being faithful to the laws and local policies that augment coastal measures in our pursuit for better production and environmental preservation.
2. Let us take heed of the environmental cries that continue to haunt us because of sheer apathy and personal interest resulting in environmental abuses which badly affects the poor.
3. Let us take the step of empathy because progress entails sacrifices and unity. If our government fails, we also fail. If our government succeeds we also succeed. However, let us also be vigilant to the developments that are offered…we don’t just exist and be lavished with what the world can render us but take the proactive step instead and see for ourselves what we can render to those who need us most.
4. Let us not hook our destiny with the ways and means that our government has for us. We are capable of shaping our own. We break the silence of each dawn with a noble purpose. Ours is not a passive waiting for whatever the government can do for us. Ours is the call to be proactive and thus help our government achieve its goal for the common good.

My fellow fisherfolk, it is not our government leaders who brave the waves and the storms to earn a good catch from the seas. While others just stand at the stretches of the coast, we find ourselves delving into the deep because we are confronted with much deeper and greater responsibilities.

This is where we earn a living. But beyond quenching this human need is the vocation to give life to our natural resources, to see life from ridges to reefs, and eventually bring life to our common home.

To our family in the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, I am deeply thankful that you have recognized, if I may say, the collaborative efforts that empowered poor fisher folks like us, and thus take our initiatives in a larger arena which now garners greater consciousness for the protection and conservation of our coastal environment. Thank you for making us realize that even the smallest efforts that we exert for such advocacies are not futile and never stupid. Convinced that we shall reap more bountiful harvests, we are able to see that all these are appropriate actions – most valid and ethical contributions that we can offer to our future generations.

Let me take this chance to render my sincerest appreciation to our community development workers on the ground who have always been my company even when the sail goes rough and perilous.

1. To the Local Government Unit of Kabasalan who has given support since 2001 in the protection of our municipal waters until now. The Office of the Municipal Agriculture despite having the least fund allocation never ceased to stir collaborative efforts with our fisherfolk organization and for cementing strong policy support in the Integrated Coastal Resource Management.
2. To the Provincial Government of Sibugay, national government agencies like the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the DA – Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the Department of Science and Technology, the Philippine National Police, and the Coast Guard for pushing us to reach our potentials and for supporting us in one way or another.
3. To all our able partners who have been my constant support, foremost to the Xavier Agriculture Extension Service Foundation of Ipil that honed my skill and talent in community development and coastal resource management.
4. To the various   Non-Government Organizations namely, the Forest Foundation Philippines formerly PTFCF, Condura, the Peace and Equity Foundation, AADC, AsiaDHRRA, RARE Philippines, PAKISAMA, HEED Foundation that funded our mangrove reforestation projects, strengthened our association, developed our leaders, and provided us functional technical knowledge and skills.
5. To the various academic institutions, the Ateneo de Zamboanga -School of Medicine, Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan, MSU – Naawan, UP Manila for providing us scientific results as basis for our local legislation and ongoing programs.
6. To my immediate community of Balungis, Concepcion, Kabasalan, Zamboanga Sibugay, the KGMC and COMFAS for always believing in me, for tirelessly supporting me.
7. To our  Local  Church in the Diocese of Ipil for raising in me profound consciousness to be faithful despite our very poor condition, for molding my values since my youth to be a grateful and responsible steward of God’s creation.
8. Lastly and most importantly, I would like to thank my family — my parents and my siblings who raised me and taught to me fulfill my responsibilities as a leader; to my wife, Rebecca, and my eleven children, who are my source of joy and who give me strength and give light to the path I take every day.

Let me say it again, no matter how simple we are, we are capable of rising above our weaknesses, capable of choosing what is good, and ever capable of making a new start. May this crusade continue until we can achieve our goal of becoming successful and progressive Filipinos in the entire nation and to the whole of Asia and the world.

MABUHAY ANG MANGINGISDANG PILIPINO! DAMO GUID NGA SALAMAT SA INYO NGA TANAN!

People displaced by war, natural disasters, and extreme privation is one of the great tragedies of our time. It is an urgent challenge governments and international bodies must address; it must be faced as well on the ground with the victims of such displacement.

This is the lifework of one person and the organization he founded. STEVEN MUNCY, a sixty-four-year-old American, was raised in a humble family grounded in the principles of Christian love for others. In 1980, he enlisted in a Baptist journeyman social ministry program that brought him as a volunteer to the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan, a transit center for Indochinese refugees of the just-ended Vietnam War. Seeing the dire lack of psychosocial services in the camp, he formed a non-governmental organization (NGO), Community Mental Health Services, to address this need with support from the Norwegian government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In 1989-1993, the NGO was also tasked by UNHCR to do similar work in the Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong.

Renamed Community and Family Services International (CFSI) in 1989, it defined itself as a humanitarian organization committed to “the lives, wellbeing and dignity of people uprooted by persecution, armed conflict, disasters, and other exceptionally difficult circumstances.” Based in the Philippines, it would soon serve for varying lengths of time in ten Asian countries, with its longest involvement in the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Over the years, CFSI has assisted refugees from forty-eight countries and territories.  In the Philippines, it has provided relief to thousands of families in natural disasters. Today, it is responding to the humanitarian disaster of the Battle of Marawi in 2017. With the Australian government’s support, it is implementing the Marawi Recovery Project, aimed at providing livelihood and other assistance to some 40,000 persons. With the United Nations Children’s Fund, CFSI helped with the transition of some nine hundred former child soldiers, assisting their families to get them back to school and lead peaceful, productive lives. In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, CFSI helped hundreds of thousands by providing literacy and reproductive health training for women and girls and working with communities to build water and sanitation facilities. CFSI also initiated a program that has enabled more than three hundred individuals from the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Indonesia to get advanced university degrees in social work.

A major CFSI engagement is its role in the Reconstruction and Development Projects of the Mindanao Trust Fund (MTF), a multi-donor effort administered by World Bank to aid in the socioeconomic recovery of Mindanao, carried out in 2005-2021 in the context of negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. As project manager, CFSI implemented a large portfolio of sub-projects, ranging from water systems and health centers to alternative education, reaching at least 727,000 beneficiaries in nineteen provinces. Part of its work was capacitating local partners, work critical to a new regional government coming out of a history of conflict. In this engagement, CFSI demonstrated most clearly the links of the various aspects of its mission, from relief and recovery to reconstruction and development, to the building of peace.

From a few workers in 1981, CFSI has a current staff of nearly four hundred in three countries. What it has achieved is the effort of many. Yet, it is also the creation of its founder and leader. STEVEN MUNCY has been on this mission for more than forty years, living outside his own country, working in a difficult environment, with no thought of material rewards for himself. Asked about his career, MUNCY self-effacingly said: “I am so grateful for the opportunities that have allowed me to help a little; grateful for the people who have been involved in this organization; grateful for the blessings I have received from the community.”

In electing STEVEN MUNCY to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his unshakable belief in the goodness of man that inspires in others the desire to serve; his life-long dedication to humanitarian work, refugee assistance, and peace building; and his unstinting pursuit of dignity, peace, and harmony for people in exceptionally difficult circumstances in Asia.

Each year, Community and Family Services International (CFSI) formulates a Plan of Action reflecting the theme for the year. The theme for 2021 is “Exceed Expectations.” Being named a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee during this, our 40th Anniversary Year, was a wonderful surprise, far exceeding even our wildest dreams. We still worry someone is going to pinch us and say wake up. Please don’t!

This award is for we, not just me. The rest of the ‘we’ is almost entirely Asian, younger, and far more attractive—which is good news for all! The existence of CFSI is a response to man’s inhumanity to humankind. And I do mean man, as it is rarely women who deliberately bring about such harm to others. Discrimination, violence, and persecution continue to force people to flee their countries, resulting in refugees in various parts of the world, including within Asia and from Asia. In addition, injustice, armed conflict, and disasters lead to lost lives, physical and psychological suffering, and persons displaced within their own countries, sheltering in forests, evacuation centers, transitory facilities, anywhere but where they truly want to be—home.

Most of the people served by CFSI have been forcibly displaced, some repeatedly, within their homelands or across national borders. Some have been denied citizenship, becoming stateless, in the land that has always been their home as well as the home of their ancestors.

While refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are resilient and have many strengths, let us be clear: forced displacement is harmful and painful. We believe such vicious assaults on the lives, well-being, and dignity of children, women, and men must come to an end, now. Although our roles may differ, we believe it is the responsibility of all to address human suffering wherever it is found, to protect our brothers and sisters from harm, and to promote respect for the universality of human rights. We also believe it is our collective responsibility to invest in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation to prevent forced displacement.

The people of CFSI come from diverse backgrounds, including different races, ethnic groups, religions, sexual orientations, experiences, and stations in life. We are, like you, part of the family that is humanity.

Numbering in the thousands over the past forty years, with most locally recruited, we have a common purpose—rebuilding lives. Specifically, protecting people from further harm; getting children into safe spaces and back into school; enabling crisis-affected communities to access basic services like food, water, shelter, and health care, including vaccinations. Rebuilding lives also means facilitating the resumption of livelihood activities and the development of new skills; the reconstruction of community infrastructure; fostering safe returns home; and promoting social justice. Our approach is needs-based, rights-oriented, empowering, and focused on solutions.

Our work has benefitted millions with operations in ten countries/territories over different periods of time. These include the Philippines, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Thailand, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. In addition, outreach efforts to many more countries. Our current top priorities are expanding ongoing humanitarian activity in Myanmar and the Philippines.

The work is challenging and sometimes dangerous, but we are inspired by the resiliency, courage, and efforts of the affected populations. Think about the Vietnamese boat people who, thirty years after resettlement in other parts of the world, raised half a million dollars for Filipinos displaced by Super Typhoon Haiyan. Grateful for help given in their time of need, they gave back without waiting to be asked to help.

Think about Timor-Leste, the new country that emerged from the ashes of violence just two decades ago, now working with its much larger neighbor — Indonesia — to create a shared future for the youth of both countries. Or those in Myanmar helping to protect and assist communities affected by persecution, violence, and the pandemic. Think about the brave souls throughout Asia, both near and far, who have stood up — are standing up — for the rights, wellbeing, and dignity of others, risking their own futures, indeed their very lives. And those working to build a just and lasting peace in war-torn Mindanao, helping children learn that arms are for hugging.

What now for CFSI? We are firmly committed to working in partnership, over the long haul, with a range of stakeholders, especially affected communities and local actors, to provide humanitarian and development assistance, help build peace, prevent disasters, and promote social justice throughout Asia. This includes capacity strengthening efforts, where necessary or advantageous.

We ask for your help to do much more, better. Concretely, to strengthen local capacity, we want to see at least another 500 persons in Southeast Asia obtain a master’s degree in social work and at least ten with a doctoral degree in the same field by the end of 2027. The aim is to ensure highly competent and committed social workers are prepared to help lead humanitarian, development, and peace-building efforts in the future, helping to bring an end to forced displacement. Let us, together, enable more ordinary people to have extraordinary impact.

On a personal level, I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for recognizing my efforts and, more importantly, those of CFSI. In so doing, you have encouraged us and called us higher. I would also like to thank— as well as hug — my family, loved ones, colleagues, friends, and supporters. None of what I have achieved in life would have been possible without you, each playing a unique role that, combined, made all the difference.

In addition to my dear colleagues at CFSI, I would like to thank the Members of our Board of Trustees, both present and past, for your many years of voluntary service, as well as your guidance and support. Lastly, my thanks to our partners — the communities, those who serve with us in the humanitarian and development arenas, and those who provide us with the funds required to carry out our work. Your acceptance and support have been, and remain, crucial. More so as we, encouraged by this Award, move forward, together, in rebuilding lives.

A parting thought. Many have asked what has kept me going in this work for more than 40 years and counting. Quite frankly, I believe every person is a holy place. Meaning, there is something of the Divine in each of us. This, my brothers and sisters, is the basis for my firm conviction that we are indeed members of the same family: humanity.

In the current global pandemic, science has become a subject of public discourse to a degree perhaps unprecedented in recent decades. Emerging from the laboratory to the public square, science has been politicized, but mostly people have become more acutely aware of the vital role of science in improving the quality of life and preserving life itself. Let us then praise science and scientists.

Bangladeshi FIRDAUSI QADRI, seventy years old, was born to a middle-class family that encouraged women to pursue an education and a career. Early on, she decided to specialize in medical research, earning a degree in biochemistry, and culminating in a doctorate from Liverpool University in the United Kingdom. Set on working in her homeland, she taught in a local university and in 1988 joined the International Centre For Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), an international health research institute based in Dhaka. Here, Dr. QADRI focused on communicable diseases, immunology, vaccine development and clinical trials.

Her most challenging engagements came in the fight against cholera and typhoid, major diseases in Bangladesh and Asian and African countries with poor access to safe water, sanitation, education, and medical care. In this, she had a key role in the development of a more affordable oral cholera vaccine (OCV) and the typhoid conjugate vaccine (Vi-TCV) for adults, children, and even infants as young as nine months. Under the auspices of World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), she led a team of experts in the 2017-2020 OCV mass vaccination of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, thus preventing a mass cholera outbreak in what is the largest refugee camp in the world. In 2020, she helped facilitate the OCV vaccination of 1.2 million people in six high-risk districts of Dhaka. Not surprisingly, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. QADRI was involved in vaccine trials and Covid-19 testing and research in Bangladesh.

Beyond current health interventions, Dr. QADRI dreams of building in Bangladesh the human and technical infrastructure for research in health science. It is a role she is well positioned to fill, having participated in scientific networks and institutions both locally and globally. In 2012 she was awarded the Christophe Rodolfe Grand Prize from the Fondation Christophe et Rodolfe Mérieux. Two years later, she used her prize money to found the Institute for Developing Science and Health Initiatives (ideSHi). Dr. QADRI leads ideSHi, which conducts biomedical research and runs training courses and a testing center. It has become a hub of scientific activity by local and visiting scientists in Bangladesh.

Dr. QADRI loves to train and mentor young scientists and inspire them by putting them in contact with well-known scientists in other countries. But building local capability is her greater goal. She is focused on upgrading laboratories so that Bangladeshi scientists will not have to go abroad (as she did early on) for lack of facilities available. Building local capability is demonstrated in her work on typhoid and cholera vaccines (already approved in Bangladesh and other countries), her current work on E. coli diarrhea vaccine, and interest in Covid-19 vaccine development.

Dedicated to science, she believes that finding answers to the health problems in her country will benefit other countries as well. She has worked in Bangladesh as a scientist for more than forty years but has no thought of retiring. Of her research niche, ideSHi, she says: “I want it to be bigger in the coming years and self-supporting in the future, less dependent on international funding. It should carry out research at the highest level and have a good number of scientists who will carry out this work. I am looking at that in the future.”

In electing FIRDAUSI QADRI to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her passion and life-long devotion to the scientific profession; her vision of building the human and physical infrastructure that will benefit the coming generation of Bangladeshi scientists, women scientists in particular, and her untiring contributions to vaccine development, advanced biotechnological therapeutics and critical research that has been saving millions of precious lives.

I am overwhelmed and extremely delighted but also humbled and thankful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this great honor. I am grateful to the Foundation for selecting me, to those who have nominated me and supported my nomination. And, of course, I thank my husband and children and friends, people of Bangladesh, and my team at icddr,b and ideSHi for their continued support.

Dear friends, let me share with you my journey until this very day:

I was born in Bangladesh, in a middle-class family with many other girl siblings, in a family dominated by women. This matriarchal family was actually headed by my grandmother, Firdausi Bano, after whom I was named. She did not go to school herself but was self-taught and knew many languages. She believed in girls’ education and saw to it from our childhood that we sisters learn to have a purpose and determination in life. She saw us off to school with tasty tiffin boxes each day and would always be waiting for us with hot lunches. She cooked and stiched pretty dresses for us and made us feel like we were special. It was for her that I grew up with a determination to do something purposeful.

When I was around five years old, I already wanted to be in public health, and my first wish was to be “Florence Nightingale,” and from then onwards, I kept on changing my interests until I got into the University of Dhaka to study Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This was when I learned the details of the physiology, biochemistry, immunology, nutrition, and molecular biology of life and the working of the human body.

It was with great interest that I tried to assimilate all this information and my efforts were always aligned to better understanding all the health and nutritional problems of people in my country. After doing my PhD from Liverpool University, I returned to Dhaka within a week. I started teaching at the University of Dhaka and tried to carry out research. But it was difficult for me to do both research and teaching simultaneously. Within six years, I realized that I was born a researcher and a full academic profession somehow left me dissatisfied. Although fortunate to start my profession as a teacher in the best university in Bangladesh, I soon moved to icddr,b to become a full-time researcher.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know how much you know about Bangladesh.

In the beginning of my career, I had to learn a lot about the public health problems confronting our country. Infectious diseases in the 1980s were still a major killer in the country. Cholera and typhoid though these are ancient diseases were still causing so much suffering and misery to people every day. Our icddr,b hospitals were filled up with mostly needy people seeking free care suffering from dehydrating diarrheal disease, especially cholera. I involved and immersed myself in laboratory work to understand the immunological basis of the disease. I started exploring ways to connect clinical work in the early 1980’ with laboratory experiments to answer questions that still remained unaddressed. The role of vaccines to protect against these diseases appeared to me to be the most important solution in tackling these problems.

Indeed, I was inspired by the work that was being carried out for so long at icddr,b both in clinical care and vaccine development. Although I published a lot, I soon realized that if I do not reach out to communities and tried to help them, I would end up my career and not achieve anything. I then decided to focus on studies to reach out to people to protect them against cholera and typhoid using solutions offered by vaccines, which are the main public health tool/short term tools for eliminating diseases from high-risk populations with poor access to clean water, sanitation, good living conditions-basically diseases of poverty-stricken people.

In 33 years of my research career, I have attempted to learn about different aspects of public health which is needed for implementation science. I do not know how much I have been able to deliver and contribute. I am grateful for this award to Bangladesh, to icddr,b, the institution that has given me the environment and encouragement to carry out my work, and last but not least to my great team in Bangladesh and all over the world without whose support I could never have achieved anything. I thank my family for their support.

Ladies and gentlemen, I finish on a very tragic and sad note. My husband passed away just several hours after the official announcement of the Ramon Magsaysay Award on 31 August 2021. He could not hear this wonderful news. His encouragement and strong support in the 45 years of our marriage have made it possible for me to dedicate my life to science and balance family life with research. I remain indebted to him. I want to share a message he wrote to me 46 years ago:

“Wish you God Speed, May Allah grant you much glory in your search for knowledge”

He is not here today to join in this celebration but his wishes for me have come true. I feel his presence all the time, and he will always be with me.

After receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award, I now feel that I need to deliver even more for Bangladesh, for the people living in low- and middle–income countries, and for people living in fragile settings. The award has made me feel more responsible, and I promise to dedicate the rest of my life to public health and contribute to saving lives.

For Timor Leste, centuries of colonial rule and decades of bitter civil strife have killed a third of the country’s population in its struggle to be a free and independent nation. It remains a fragile state, burdened by political dissension, violence, a weak economy, and widespread poverty.  This is a situation in which the work of civil society and ordinary citizens is urgent and invaluable.

MARIA DE LOURDES MARTINS CRUZ, widely known as MANA LOU,was born one of seven children of a well-to-do coffee planter in Liquica, Timor Leste.  Displaying an affinity for religious work as a child, she studied at a Jesuit institute in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where she was exposed to the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire.  She then joined the Canossian Sisters congregation, but left before taking her final vows when she discerned that her personal vocation lay outside the convent walls.

In 1989, she founded Instituto Seculare Maun Alin Iha Kristu (ISMAIK), or Secular Institute of Brothers and Sisters in Christ, a lay institute of men and women dedicated to uplifting the poorest of the poor through projects in health care, education, farming, animal husbandry, and other self-help initiatives. MANA LOU carried out her work in the midst of Timor Leste’s tumultuous transition to independence in 2002,  when the Indonesian army occupied the country and fierce fighting broke out between pro-Indonesia and pro-independence Timorese militias.  Boldly crossing battle lines, she talked to Indonesian soldiers, warring militias, and refugees, spreading, by force of her spirit of solidarity, a gospel of love and peace.  She built a refuge in her father’s coffee estate in Dare, in the hills above Dili; in time this refuge would include a school for girls, orphanages, a home for the sick, and a place where people of opposing faiths and politics could find safety and peace.

From this beginning, ISMAIK has expanded to more than ten such houses across the country.  Called “schools of life” and led by ISMAIK members and volunteers, these houses serve, according to need, as centers for moral and spiritual formation, skills and livelihood training, care centers for tuberculosis patients and children with disabilities, and hubs for community participation.  In partnership with an American doctor, MANA LOU also established Bairo-Ata Clinic, a large, free clinic for the poor that averages 300 patients daily and is the nation’s largest provider of tuberculosis treatment.

Typically, however, ISMAIK’s initiatives are small-scale, needs-based, person-to-person, and practical.  They put the premium on values of self-reliance, the use of locally available resources such as the promotion of herbal medicine and food gardens, mutual help in projects such like labor-pooling for house construction,  and moral and spiritual formation.  MANA LOU says, “We see that Jesus was very simple.  He was impassioned, always ready to do something, ready to act.” “Hence,” she says, “people should take control: if a road needs fixing, we fix it; if someone needs help in farm work, we help.”

Transcending the ethnic, religious, and political divisions in Timorese society, MANA LOU is animated not only by her faith, but also by her love for her people and her conviction that building independent, productive, and ethical persons is fundamental in her country, where a sense of national identity and civic consciousness are as yet undeveloped. “Ours is a new nation,” she says. “It will need people to have a heart big enough to love and bodies prepared to do hard work.”

In electing MARIA DE LOURDES MARTINS CRUZ to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her pure humanitarianism in uplifting Timor Leste’s poor, her courageous pursuit of social justice and peace, and her nurturing the development of autonomous, self-reliant, caring citizens, so vital in new, post-conflict nations in the world.

Greetings of peace, solidarity and fraternity to all! My honour and gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me to receive this award. I thank you, President Abella, and your team for your support. I was full of dreams growing up in a small village, blessed by family and nature in a coffee plantation. All those dreams were destroyed by war; war kills people in ways worse than animals. I started to revolt when I became a victim. But God led me to a different path.

During my retreat, I asked Him what should I do? In the stillness of Jesus’ suffering image, I heard a voice say: Why do you search for Me in the convent? You see, I suffered a lot in a remote area with poor, disadvantaged, illiterate and suffering people. They don’t have any support. I really need your help! This is the real secret of my life’s vocation.

Returning to East Timor after my studies, I was motivated to work, physically and spiritually, to establish IS-MAIK to serve the poor, even if I began with no funds.

It is not easy to find volunteers to solve social problems in rural areas. So we established branches with like-minded groups, places to empower poor and disadvantaged people like the youth, teach them the realities of life and educate them. We started schools for life, where people learn in a practical way and live with nature; in the process, they developed beliefs that made them work together to transform society. It is like building a house carefully one brick at a time.

We listen to poor people’s voices in times of difficulty and conflict. A genuine concern for the poor and marginalized motivated members and the IS-MAIK family, in a chaotic situation, to be unafraid to take risks, organize teams to bring people to safety and peace. We worked with the police, military and militias, and the international community so that they show respect for human rights. With support from civil and military authorities, IS-MAIK cared for refugees or displaced people to feel safe and respect life. We fed them, gave medical assistance to those in need and protection to those in danger or were “suspects”. We listened to those who experienced violence, helped them settle down with prayers and reflection. This is the work IS-MAIK had done, especially before the 1999 referendum.

With Dr. Daniel Murphy, IS-MAIK established Bairo Pite clinic in September 1999. We treat people using herbal and natural medicine until help from the international community and emergency teams arrive. This was the first clinic to respond to all emergency situations after the conflict, with the dedication and hard work of Dr. Dan and his staff. IS-MAIK intends to continue the clinic’s work, help people with tuberculosis, and children and mothers who lack nutrition. This IS-MAIK offers to the nation as part of its contribution to build a caring society.

I could not have done all the work and mission without the support of all my brothers and sisters. I cannot mention everyone by name—all your names are written in my heart, and I carry you on my shoulders. Our work and mission is not yet finished; there is still plenty to do, I continue to count on you all, so please come and help! God blessed you all.

In Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest economies, poverty is not as stark and visible as in much of the world, but it exists for ten percent of the country’s population of 5.7 million. It is a problem that can be statistically glossed over in ways that can dull human sympathies, foster moral complacency, and obscure the fact that in the end, poverty is not a matter of numbers but of real people needing other people’s help.

Singaporean TONY TAY was born into poverty. Abandoned by his father when he was five, homeless, his mother barely surviving on transient work, TONY and a sister were put in the care of an orphanage, while two other sisters stayed with a foster family. At twelve, TONY dropped out of school, had to find food where he could, and started working at odd jobs. By sheer grit and perseverance, he slowly pulled himself out of poverty, started a printing business; and finally had his own home, raising his own family in modest comfort.

In the Singaporean ethos of self-reliance, he could have easily put the past behind him. And he did, until he was fifty-seven when, at his mother’s funeral, he was deeply moved by the great number of people who came to give their respects to his mother. Despite her own difficulties, she had devoted herself to charity work with the Canossian Sisters. Inspired, TONY and his wife began their share of doing good for others—collecting unsold bread and vegetables from the market and bringing these to the Canossian convent to be given to the needy. Enlisting family and friends, they began to cook what they had gathered in their home kitchen, delivering packed meals to the poor and elderly.

Their “one hot meal revolution” had begun. In 2003, TONY organized “Willing Hearts,” a fully volunteer-based, non-profit organization that distributes hot, packed meals daily to the needy. Starting with just eleven volunteers and distributing three hundred meals daily, Willing Hearts now cooks six thousand meals every day, which are delivered to forty distribution points in Singapore. It operates 365 days a year and has some three hundred regular volunteers, operating out of a facility in a public community center. Their beneficiaries are neglected and abandoned elderly and persons with disabilities, the sick, children of single-parent households, low-income families, and migrant workers.

Supported with donations in cash but mostly in kind, its facility operates daily from 4:30 AM to 3:30 PM as volunteers collect, prepare, cook, pack, and deliver meals in a systematic cycle of work that respects the people they serve by seeing to the quality and quantity of the food, observing food safety, and segregating Muslim and non-Muslim meals. Willing Hearts has not missed a single day of food-giving since it started fourteen years ago.

Willing Hearts has extended its services to optical and dental care, “So people can better enjoy their food,” TONY says, expressing a typically Singaporean love for food. But it is not just about food. What gratifies TONY is how the simple sharing of food has fostered the spirit of volunteerism: taxi drivers have volunteered to deliver food packs; parents bring their children to the group’s kitchen to help; volunteers and their families are nurtured by their Willing Hearts experience in the virtues of service, empathy, and kindness.

Today, TONY participates in all aspects of the work, all day every day. He has no grand vision of what he is doing, except that people must love one another and that “God will provide.” He often speaks of Willing Hearts as a way of being part of one family, one village—a poignant statement from one who did not have much of a family growing up. He says: “We are just sharing, sharing all that we have in life to make a better society.”

In electing TONY TAY to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his quiet, abiding dedication to a simple act of kindness—sharing food with others—and his inspiring influence in enlarging this simple kindness into a collective, inclusive, vibrant volunteer movement that is nurturing the lives of many in Singapore.

Thank you for the award. It is a great honor.

Willing Hearts started with one word—yes. Yes to the Canossian sisters to help them collect extra bread that were not sold for the day from a bakery. Yes to distribute the rest of the bread to those who needed it. Yes to collect the extra vegetables from the wholesalers. Yes to my wife when she asked to cook for the elderly who couldn not cook for themselves. Yes to all who asked for help along the way.

And along the way, I asked for help and many said, “yes,” so Willing Hearts is a journey of many who said, “yes” to those in need.

I never thought that our work would grow so big. There were no big plans when we started. There are no big plans now. There are no big plans for the future. Just one plan: God’s plan.

There are many people to thank. I would like to thank and offer this award:

• To God: the honor and glory belongs to God for making all things possible. He has given me the strength and the courage to keep Willing Hearts going. Without God’s blessing, we would be nowhere.
• To my late mother: for being the model and the spirit behind Willing Hearts.
• To my wife: for being the pillar of support in my journey. As they say, “Behind every successful man, there is a woman.” Thank you for always being there, Mary!
• To the donors, supporters, and volunteers: for believing and supporting Willing Hearts since day one, and for being there 365 days a year, to help the needy all these years.

Lastly, thank you to everybody here for sharing this honor. I salute and give my best wishes to the other award winners.

Indonesia is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries, and its indigenous peoples (IPs) are estimated at seventy million, or nearly 30% of the country’s population. However, the question of who they are, where they are, and what rights they can claim is contentious in light of state policy that, in the name of national integration and unity avoids facing the realities of ethnic division.

This is the challenge that an IP movement in Indonesia has taken up, and in this movement one person has played a strategic role. ABDON NABABAN, a Toba Batak from Sumatra, began his social advocacy as a student and continued as a non-government organization (NGO) officer after graduation. In 1999, after the fall of the Suharto regime, he was one of the organizers of a congress that launched AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, or “Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago,” a mass-based organization that today has over 115 local chapters and 21 regional chapters throughout the country’s thirty-four provinces; collectively, AMAN represents over 17 million members. As AMAN executive secretary and later its secretary-general, NABABAN has led what is now Indonesia’s largest, most influential non-state organization.

When AMAN started, Indonesia’s indigenous peoples—masyarakat adat—were defined by state policy in a way that limited their official recognition to only one million people. AMAN’s major challenge was to represent the actual vast population of masyarakat adat, totaling fifty to seventy million, and thus become a real, autonomous force. AMAN also needed to build its strength as a movement to a level where it could effectively influence state policy. Under NABABAN’s leadership, AMAN’s legal challenge to existing forestry laws finally won in 2012 a landmark constitutional court ruling which decreed that forests in IP territories are not “state forests,” thus returning some fifty-seven million hectares of government-controlled forest land to indigenous communities.

In a related initiative, NABABAN shepherded a massive effort to produce “One Map” of the country’s vast IP territories, after AMAN and supporting NGOs launched the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency in 2010, to create a single data base for verifying land/forest claims on ownership, use, and tenure in view of incomplete, inaccurate and conflicting government data. By 2016, AMAN had submitted to government “indigenous maps” covering 8.23 million hectares. But NABABAN’s arduous crusade continues: the constitutional court ruling and AMAN’s maps still await implementation.

Still AMAN under NABABAN’s dynamic guidance, has raised the bar in declaring that IPs will no longer be placeless and invisible. Equally important, AMAN has built up its membership from 200 communities in 1999 to 2,342 communities in 2017, representing a constituency of seventeen million individuals. It raised its public visibility and worked collaboratively with government in legal reform, conflict settlement, and economic empowerment. In the 2014 election of President Joko Widodo, AMAN delivered 12 million votes for Widodo after he made six commitments to address the IP sector’s needs. While government still has to deliver on these campaign commitments, AMAN has proven that it is a political force that cannot be ignored.

Acknowledged as the single most important person in Indonesia’s IP movement, NABABAN has worked tirelessly for twenty-four years, braving great difficulties and at tremendous cost to himself and his family. Before AMAN, he was not really conscious of what it meant to be an indigenous person until, working in an anti-logging campaign, he realized that the land taken over by a big industrial lumber estate was actually ancestral land that belonged to his grandparents and other Toba Batak families. He has since raised this discovery of IP identity and responsibility to involve millions of others. Speaking with quiet force he says, “It’s about self-identification. You have to make people understand: ‘This is about me. This is about my forest, this is about my land, this is about my water.’”

In electing ABDON NABABAN to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his brave, self-sacrificing advocacy to give voice and face to his country’s IP communities, his principled, relentless, yet pragmatic leadership of the world’s largest IP rights movement, and the far-reaching impact of his work on the lives of millions of Indonesians.

I receive this award with infinite gratitude to the creator of the universe, God almighty, and the ancestors who protect, accompany, and guard me always. I would also like, from the bottom of my heart, to thank all my friends in AMAN. This award is for us.

I dedicate this award to my parents, my wife Devi, and my daughters Meilonia, Mena, and Mayang, who are at home but with me here, too.

Me and my family, we’ve been through a lot. There were even times when I was scared. But, everytime, we overcame. And we grew.

I became an activist in the late ’80s, opposing the all-too-powerful New Order Regime. In the ’90s I realized that I was also a victim. I am one of millions of indigenous peoples in Indonesia. At the time, I—an activist, a victim, an indigenous person—fought an industrial forest company in our ancestral lands. That company, however, was just a front for the real oppressor: authoritarianism and developmentalism. For them, we, the indigenous peoples, were not wanted. We are to be oppressed, to be eradicated, criminalized, impoverished, victimized. Devi, you knew all this, through the years of our frugal life together. You stood by me every time, with trust, hope, and love.

From the very beginning, I have been on assignments given by my people and constituents: to initiate and lead organizations and alliances for the oppressed and for the environment. Because those assignments come with hope and trust, too. My latest assignment is from the indigenous peoples in North Sumatra—that is, to run for governor. This is a province so corrupt and violent.

It took me and my family a long time to finally overcome the fear for our physical, financial, political, and social well-being with this assignment. Again, because of the trust and hope placed upon me, I said, “Yes, I am running for governor of North Sumatra.”

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight is also a night to ask ourselves: where do we come from? What values, what spirit can we offer our society and our earth?

When differing opinions or interests manifest into violent conflicts, when the misuse of religion causes more killings, when developing the economy means destroying the environment, standing here before you, I offer the values and spirit of indigenous peoples to tackle present-day problems of our society and the environment—inequality, crimes, climate change—in a way that is not violent, but humane and sustainable.

And let our countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, lead the world towards peace, where the well-being of people, plants, animals, water, soils, and air prevail.

Manual scavenging is blight on humanity in India. Consigned by structural inequality to the dalits, India’s “untouchables,” manual scavenging is the work of removing by hand human excrement from dry latrines and carrying on the head the baskets of excrement to designated disposal sites. A hereditary occupation, manual scavenging involves 180,000 dalit households cleaning the 790,000 public and private dry latrines across India; 98 percent of scavengers are meagerly paid women and girls. While the Constitution and other laws prohibit dry latrines and the employment of manual scavengers, these have not been strictly enforced since government itself is the biggest violator.

BEZWADA WILSON was born to a dalit family in Kolar Gold Fields township in Karnataka state. Although his family had been engaged in manual scavenging for generations, he was spared the labor to be the first in his family to pursue a higher education. Treated as an outcast in school and acutely aware of his family’s lot, BEZWADA was filled with great anger; but he would later channel this anger to a crusade to eradicate manual scavenging.

He started by changing the mindsets of his family and relatives—that being a dalit is not their fate but a status imposed by how society has been organized, and that no human being should be made to do such demeaning work as scavenging. In 1986, he sent a complaint about dry latrines to the authorities of their town, and when he was ignored sent the complaint to the Prime Minister, threatening legal action. As a result, the town’s dry latrines were converted into water-seal latrines and the scavengers transferred to non-scavenging jobs.

He boldly moved his crusade to other states, working with dalit activists, recruiting volunteers for what would take shape as a people’s movement of manual scavengers and their children, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). With BEZWADA WILSON as national convenor, SKA was launched in 1993 when he initiated the filing of a public interest litigation (PIL) case in India’s Supreme Court, naming all states, union territories, and the government departments of Railways, Defense, Judiciary, and Education as violators of the 1993 Prohibition Act banning dry latrines and the employment of manual scavengers.

SKA vigorously conducted district-level meetings to raise awareness about scavenging, the caste system, and the 1993 Prohibition Act, and trained local leaders and volunteers for the movement. In 2004-2005, it undertook a mass latrine demolition drive across the state of Andhra Pradesh; exposed the occupational violence faced by female scavengers; and met with officials to demand the demolition of dry latrines and the provision of alternative occupations for scavengers. In 2010, SKA led an India-wide march for the total eradication of scavenging, and again in 2015 undertook a 125-day bus journey across 30 states to mobilize the public against manual scavenging. The movement has since made significant progress. In 2013 SKA successfully lobbied for a new law that includes rehabilitation support for scavengers. It lobbied with local authorities for scholarships for children of manual scavengers, and conducted vocational training for scavengers’ daughters to move them into more decent jobs. It is now involved in crafting a new law that provides financial aid for scavengers transitioning to new occupations.

Fifty years old, BEZWADA WILSON has spent 32 years on his crusade, leading not only with a sense of moral outrage but also with remarkable skills in mass organizing, and working within India’s complex legal system. SKA has grown into a network of 7,000 members in 500 districts across the country. Of the estimated 600,000 scavengers in India, SKA has liberated around 300,000. While BEZWADA has placed at the core of his work the dalits’ self-emancipation, he stresses that manual scavenging is not a sectarian problem: “You are addressing all members of society, because no human being should be subjected to this inhuman practice.” Society itself has to be transformed.

In electing BEZWADA WILSON to receive the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.

I am extremely happy and humbled by such an honour that everyone across Asia covets.

I am also here with mixed feelings to receive this award you have bestowed upon me.

I come from a socially discriminated community called Dalits, who have faced the worst form of oppression for generations over many centuries. Sadly, this form of oppression, equivalent to slavery, still continues in modern India, a country aspiring to be a world power.

Furthermore, I represent an even more segregated sections of Dalits who have been forced to do the most menial and extremely dehumanizing occupation in the world, that of manual scavenging—the cleaning and clearing of society’s human excreta manually with bare hands.

I therefore am delighted and grateful that you have chosen a humble son of such a community for this prestigious award. As I think of it, my heart swells with joy and my eyes fill with tears.

But the tears of joy are mixed with tears of grief and regret—that hundreds and thousands of my people have died and are dying in the soak pits. Millions more have succumbed gradually to incurable diseases; their kith and kin live in squalor, with little or no opportunities to improve their lives. I can go on and on to describe our pathetic conditions. But my people have also demonstrated their power of resilience.

This award goes to all the women who burnt their baskets to reject manual scavenging. And I dedicate this award to all those who lost their lives while cleaning the sewer lines. In this moment I remember my team members of Safai Karamchari Andolan spread across all states of India. They worked hard, indeed poured out sweat and blood, awakened an almost resigned community, produced evidence to fight our legal battles, lobbied with legislators, pressured an apathetic administration, demolished dry latrines—symbols of national shame—and, in 2010 and 2015, undertook a tedious bus journey traversing the country.

I also want to thank Dalit movements, women’s movements, social, secular and democratic movements, that have been fellow travelers in our journey. We have been natural allies in fighting casteist, patriarchal, and fascist forces.

I value your award as a fitting and significant recognition that will push forward our struggle in a huge way. It will boost my peoples’ determination to put an end to the obnoxious and inhuman practice. With your recognition, we are sure to gain more friends and supporters from across Asia and rest of the world, whose support is necessary to protect human dignity and human rights of all people similarly discriminated and stigmatized anywhere in the world.

In this connection, I wish to humbly remind you that there are now over 260 million people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe who fall under the “discriminated” based on work and descent. I wish that the world awakens to their plight and support their just struggles.

I end here with what our great leader Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar had said, “Ours is not a fight for wealth or for power. It is the fight for reclamation of human dignity and personhood.” We will march on to annihilate caste.

Let us join hands to tear down the walls that divide humanity on the basis of birth, caste, race and gender and let us restore equality, equity, and freedom of all people.

Jai Bhim! Mabuhay!!

Laos is slowly coming into its own after decades of war and political instability but governance systems remain fragile and public services woefully inadequate. New prosperity has fueled a tremendous increase in motorized vehicles in the capital city of Vientiane, with its population of 800,000. But the lack of road safety education, strict licensing requirements, traffic rules and their enforcement, and traffic management aids has resulted in a veritable anarchy of cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and tuktuks (motorized tricycles). Compounded by the absence of emergency rescue services, the road fatality rate in Laos is one of the worst in Asia. Thus the Asian Development Bank has cited road use management as a priority need that Laos must address.

In 2007, a small team of volunteers in the Foundation for Assisting Poor People of Lao PDR used a donated ambulance to create “Rescue Vientiane Capital” to provide first-aid service on the city’s roads, but only on weekends. In 2010, Sebastien Perret, a Frenchman living in Laos and a trained paramedic and firefighter, aghast at how victims are left to die because of the utter lack of emergency assistance, joined the foundation as a volunteer. Shortly thereafter, Perret, Laotian Phaichi Konepathoum, and five 15-year-old volunteers, created “VIENTIANE RESCUE” (VR) to operate a free ambulance service on a 24/7 basis, despite the absence of equipment, sponsors, and formal training.

Driven by pure humanitarianism, the VIENTIANE RESCUE volunteers (students and mostly poor Laotians) worked 20 to 168 hours a week out of the house of one volunteer and later a rented bungalow; the volunteers slept in shifts when they were not sleeping on roadsides, often subsisting on nothing but instant noodles, and sometimes unable to respond to calls for help because their ambulance had ran out of petrol. Supported by small private donations and the volunteers’ own pocket money, the first years were extremely difficult. The volunteers had little equipment and few medicines; they would remove and wash bloodied bandages and their only cervical collar once the victim was already in the hospital so these could be reused for the next accident call. At one point they even lost their only ambulance.

By dint of sheer perseverance and the passion to help, the ragtag group of volunteers improved and professionalized its services, acquired more equipment, and expanded the range of its work. Perret produced a basic first aid manual and accessed expert paramedic training for volunteers with the help of Thai partners. Gradually, the group’s heroic work attracted more volunteers and some assistance from local and foreign donors.

Today, VIENTIANE RESCUE Team has a one-truck firefighting unit; a one-boat scuba rescue team, the country’s first; a minivan converted into the country’s first EMS (Emergency Medical Service) ambulance; seven other ambulances; and three more base stations, two made from shipping containers. Its uniformed volunteers now number 200, working a free 24-hour hotline that responds to 15-30 accidents a day. In 2015 alone, VIENTIANE RESCUE responded to 5,760 road accidents, and between 2011 and 2015 the group has helped save as many as ten thousand lives.

As a purely voluntary and homegrown effort, VIENTIANE RESCUE is distinctly inspiring in the selfless dedication of the Laotian youth who have made its work possible despite the odds. Of them, Perret says: “They’re the best people I’ve met in my life … so often they risk their lives to save people they don’t even know.” And he adds: “We do not make miracles every day, but sometimes we do and that’s amazing.”

In electing VIENTIANE RESCUE to receive the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes its heroic work in saving Laotian lives in a time and place of great need, under the most deprived of circumstances, inspiring by their passionate humanitarianism a similar generosity of spirit in many others.

(The response was delivered by Vientiane Rescue Co-founder, Sebastien Perret.)

Today is a strange day. It’s quite hard for us to believe that all of this is real. When we started this service 6 years ago, we had absolutely no expectations, and not a clue about what the future could be. Not because we were pessimistic, but because building an ambulance service from scratch meant investing millions of dollars, highly qualified professionals and equipment. We were 3 adults and 4-5 kids. It sounded unrealistic for us to have other expectations than being just a small first aid team, and do what we could to take care of those dying on the roadside.

At first we heard pessimistic feedbacks from international NGOs, institutions, international organizations and companies we contacted to try to get some support. I’ll always remember an insurance company asking me “What’s your business plan for the next 5 years?”. We also heard: “This is a nice but insane idea”. “Good luck, such a project in such a country is impossible”. But the most common question we had to hear was probably “Who are you?”. “Who are you to think that you could succeed where bigger fish failed?”.

One large government organization actually tried to set up a pre-hospital emergency response ambulance service a few years ago, with a local hospital, invested a lot of money and hired many expensive consultants from abroad. At the end, the project was a failure. So how could a handful of youngsters succeed where a wealthy international organization failed?

At the end, the only thing that helped us to believe in this project was a common idea: we were sure that this was the right thing to do. No matter the hardships, no matter the time it would take. We thought that we had to try. That was the most important. To try.

Today, we haven’t changed. What has changed is that now people do believe in our capacity to move forward, and listen to us.  Today, if we’ve achieved so much, it is still unbelievable for us. Not just only about the quality of the training we get, not just about all the new services we provide and equipment we buy to be able to face any kind of emergency situations. It’s not just about figures on a sheet of paper. Not about statistics. It’s way more than this. It’s about the way we do it. The way we care for the victims of the road.

With love. Love and compassion, when our volunteers do their best to alleviate the suffering of victims and their families.

With respect. Respect because we treat people with the same humanity without any discrimination based on ethnic origin, sex, language, wealth or religion.

With generosity. If in today’s world, generosity can be define by “Give and take”, our volunteers give in an old fashion way. They give their time, their energy, their skills and sometimes even their own money to sustain our service. Some of our volunteers are on stand by 24 hours a day for weeks, taking only one day off per month to go back to their families. This means more than 700 hours a month on stand by. Do you know any other place on earth where you have volunteers giving the way OUR volunteers give, for people they don’t even know?

And passion. An amazing passion that we have, each and every one of us, deep in our hearts. A passion that keep our volunteers on stand by day and night while they have to work besides to earn a living, no matter their tiredness. A passion that binds us together when we witness road crash victims dying in our hands due to the violence of the accident crashes in Vientiane and despite our efforts to resuscitate them. A passion that help us stick together when one of our volunteer is killed by a reckless driver on Vientiane roads, like it happened last December. A passion that transforms people around us. A passion that we are spreading around the world through international TV and newspapers coming to witness the work of our amazing volunteers.

While we’ve been working on this Rescue service for 6 years now, our volunteers are the last people on earth to realize exactly what we’ve achieved.

So, we would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and its board of trustees today, to give our volunteers the opportunity to be proud of themselves.