Theater at its best is a most difficult and demanding art form. As mimed fable, the play laughs at fools and praises heroes while probing their emotional and ethical dilemmas amid the adventures of life. Yet the serious dramatist goes far beyond telling tales. He mirrors and illuminates the realities of his society. None are spared in this remorseless scrutiny. Ideological persuasions are seen as incomplete and often shallow. Candor of inquiry and presentation distinguish the genuine artist from the propagandist. And his actors portray the timelessness and universality of the essential human character that with its flaws, fallacies and fortitude must shape our destinies.

SOMBHU MITRA qualifies with gifted versatility as a complete man of such theater. A Bengali, he is heir to the rich cultural tradition that also produced Rabindranath Tagore. Joining the professional stage in 1939 when 24 years old, he quickly earned repute as a fine actor with notably eloquent voice and gesture, but quit three companies out of dissatisfaction with stereotyped dramas. In association with wartime anti-fascist writers and artists in 1943, his staging of a protest play won theatrical acclaim. This relationship ended in 1948 with his refusal to sacrifice art to doctrine. That same year he organized a non-commercial dramatic troupe, Bohurupee, with 15 artists for whom the theater was not a livelihood but a dedication.

Bohurupee’s initial years were marked by artistic integrity achieved through hard struggle. The troupe was shunned by commercial theaters, alarmed by the success of its startling departures from familiar sentimentality and melodrama, and accused of distortion by the political right and left. MITRA and his wife, Tripti?herself an accomplished actress, subsisted on tea and boiled vegetables until tided through each crisis by film roles. By preference, MITRA today receives income only as Head of the Drama Department of Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta.

Overcoming meager costuming and sets with masterful acting and stagecraft, MITRA produced for Indian audiences some of the world’s great classics. His adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House, and his sensitive translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, made dramatically meaningful in Bengali their moral concern with truth and self-realization. His production of Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), Tagore’s never-before staged poetic allegory of the spirit triumphing over materialism, was a cultural milestone. Portrayal of such philosophical implications with convincing reality in this and other powerful plays by Tagore has allowed Bengalis to discover themselves in drama. Bohurupee’s repertoire, also received with critical enthusiasm in Delhi, Bombay and Madras, includes modern comedies and social satires by MITRA and hitherto unknown Indian playwrights.

An exacting disciplinarian with himself and colleagues, MlTRA trains his troupe in voice culture, body movement and all other aspects of acting, and in stage organization, lighting and decor. His insistence upon minute examination of plays encourages reflection and interpretation. In 28 years Bohurupee’s artistic teamwork has fostered other lively drama groups throughout India, while MITRA has shaped the literary taste of an intellectual generation.

In electing SOMBHU MITRA to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his creating a relevant theater movement in India by superb production, acting and writing.

Here tonight I rise, in humility and gratitude, to accept this honor on behalf of all those around the world who have joined the search for a meaningful theater. At the core of this search is man, in his relationship with society and with his own self. Only when this dual relationship finds its harmony does man achieve his completeness.

Man, perhaps, laid the foundations of society out of a sense of necessity. But it is in the nature of man that he is compulsively driven to overcome the dictates of mere convenience. In the early days of civilization, as he needed to draw water, he invented the urn. The urn was filled, but not his heart. So he began now to decorate it with color, geometric patterns, and his imagination. What an incomprehensible and strange craving!

Thus, too, in the sensual urge, he had to establish the innate presence of love. Thus again, the necessity of having to live together had to find expressions in relations that are sacred between the son and the mother, the brother and the sister. Why so? We do not know yet, nor can we fully perceive the nature of the intimate man who is in us. Nor can we fathom the depth where he resides. Who knows how far back he stretches out into our membrane of consciousness?

That is, perhaps, why we are threatened by inevitable disequilibria, a loss of sense of balance, as society is increasingly rigidly organized and shaken by the explosion of technology. Man finds himself unable to satisfy his creative and humane faculties within the limits of the organized society which he structures around himself. As the mechanism of creature comforts piles up, he is restless. He is alienated. And he is seized by hopeless greed and violence.

It is now clear that personal religion which prompts in us the finer sensibilities, the craving for love, the touch of affection and the persuasion of compassion, all spring from the valley of our ancient pastoral world. These sensibilities are daily eroded as we crowd ourselves in the dehumanized metropolises of the world. And yet, there is no road by which to return. This is today’s drama. The afflictions of today’s man and his tragic efforts to find his bearings with his social self are at the very center of the contemporary theater movement.

Every age throws up its own peculiar fundamental questions, and it must come up with an answer relevant to the times. A relevant theater is one that plunges into the deepest recesses of these issues, where man is ever seeking to come to peace with himself.

In this search of man for man, we are all partners, wherever we are and whatever we do. On behalf of all I pay my homage to the undying ideals of the late Ramon Magsaysay, in whose name we are gathered here tonight.

Fundamental industrial development presents a difficult quandary about where to invest scarce resources and talent. Achievements in one sector compound the need for engineering skills and fabricating capacity in another. Orchestrating each stage of industrial advance to harmonize total productive capability with available markets requires exceptional organizational leadership.

The role of the foreign entrepreneur, participating in such accelerating industrialization, is rarely easy but can prove crucial for efficiency in accomplishing national goals. Especially is this so when the foreigner works alone, or in a small team, rather than as a representative of a large foreign firm or a multinational corporation.

HENNING HOLCK-LARSEN, a young master of chemical engineering from the University of Copenhagen, came to India nearly 40 years ago to sell equipment for manufacturing cement. In 1938 he and Soren Kristian Toubro established Larsen & Toubro with a clerk, a messenger and the motto: “In Service Lies Success.” During World War II they operated a repair shop as the first emergency floating dock in Bombay harbor for repair and conversion of Allied merchant vessels as warships. Foregoing making more immediately profitable consumer goods in favor of designing and fabricating capital equipment for vital industries, and using Indian personnel and capital, they made that country’s first indigenous dairy machinery. Manufacture of sophisticated switchgears firmly established their reputation. Uncompromising quality control, reliability, and excellent after-sales-service ensured the technical collaboration of world-famous engineering firms. Planning production ahead to mesh with India’s five-year plans, they have contributed much to import substitution.

Larsen & Toubro Limited now has annual sales of over US$100 million. Their industrial estate at Powai, outside Bombay, sprawls over 34 landscaped hectares; four subsidiaries and four associated companies operate elsewhere. Nearly one-third of their more than 10,000 employees are engineers. The range and quality of their engineering accomplishments span the wide spectrum of industrialization in India and abroad; alloy steel pressure vessels and boiler feedwater heaters for fertilizer plants, carbon steel columns for petroleum refineries, stainless steel spray drying plants for PVC resin manufacture, and the first nuclear reactor vessels for India’s nuclear program are but a few.

In a competitive world market orders have come from 28 countries: the U.K., Denmark, the U.S.S.R., Australia, eight Asian, nine Middle Eastern and seven African states. Local investors respond promptly to capital needs; today more than 25,000 Indians own 97 percent of Larsen & Toubro Limited. Committed to Indianization before this became government policy, the company today has only two foreign technicians who will leave this year plus Chairman HOLCK-LARSEN. However, neither favoritism, nepotism nor high connection influence employment, which is strictly on merit. Insistence on professionalism of management and engineering, recognition of competence, and tireless experimentation with new ideas by a 200-member research and development staff have made the firm a technology leader. Further enhancing morale among an exceptional employee corps is HOLCK- LARSEN’S stress on the essential link between personal and organizational growth. Continuing training is given to engineers, managers, workers, apprentices and even vendors and subcontractors at the firm—in India and abroad. Constructive suggestions are rewarded. Employee benefits range from a consumers’ cooperative store and credit cooperative to medical care, educational opportunities, nutrition, family planning, sports and yoga classes.

Over it all presides the modest, carefully-spoken, gifted Dane who has shown how Westem technology can contribute to the betterment of life in the East.

In electing HENNING HOLCK-LARSEN to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his signal contribution towards India’s technical modernization, complementing industrialization with human concern.

I do not have words to express my feelings, my gratitude, for the great honor done to me. It is an honor, not only to my adopted country, India, where thousands of my Indian co-workers, colleagues and friends have supported me in my endeavors over the last 40 years, but to thc far away land of my birth. I believe I am the first citizen of Denmark to have received this prestigious Award. On their behalf I accept this honor in ale humility.

Denmark is a country well known for its interest in promoting international understanding. However, I have lived the major part of my life in India where the Indian government has been, and is, making a continuous and conscious effort to promote understanding and establish cordial relations with all other nations of the world. My strong involvement in that country has given me the opportunity of closely associating with thousands of Indians in all possible walks of life and, fortunately, of gaining their friendship and close understanding.

The success that came my way in helping to foster the advancement of industrial development in that great country can be attributed to a good deal of luck but mainly to my fortune in working with a competent and devoted team. The Larsen & Toubro Group now has a happy family of over 10,000 direct employees and more than 25,000 shareholders.

I, therefore, share this unique honor bestowed on me today with all those persons with whom I have had the privilege of working in India, as well as with the company’s collaborators, contacts and customers on all five continents.

The Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, though located in the distant Philippines, have created a competent and effective organization to keep a watchful and kindly eye, year after year, on happenings in all the countries of Asia. They have succeeded in impartially identifying individuals and groups each year and, assessing the contributions made, to reward them annually on the birth date of your illustrious late president, Ramon Magsaysay.

This generous gesture alone is, in my opinion, helping to create lasting understanding amongst all Asians and the peoples of other nations attached to Asia, thus bringing them closer to each other, and to the rest of the world. Indeed, it truly reflects the ideals and the spirit of your great departed leader, President Ramon Magsaysay.

In a few days, when my wife and I return to India, we will carry with us our admiration for the Foundation, the government and the people of the Philippines and, of course, the unforgettable impact of today’s function. We will cherish these memories and endeavor to live up to the great honor you have bestowed on me today.

One of the last major colonial enclaves on earth, Hong Kong has a special public character. Committed to commerce above all else, the colony survives and flourishes because it offers facilities for all business comers. Where profit is the ultimate yardstick, inevitably many who have less will suffer. Such deprivation is compounded in Hong Kong by the pressure of inflocking refugees, mostly from China. In 30 years the population has grown from some 650,000 to nearly 5,000,000. The scramble for living in this congested manufacturing center and merchandise mart has severely strained the Judeo-Christian values basic to British law and administration.

Into this magnet for diverse humanity in 1951 moved ELSIE HUME ELLIOTT settling among the shacks of a squatter village. A Plymouth Brethren missionary for three years in China, she and associates opened for their Hong Kong neighbors an urgently needed simple clinic and school, starting with 30 pupils in an old army tent. Ultimately she left the rigidly evangelical mission society to save the school that had been registered in her name.

For a year, depend debt on giving private lessons and teaching in other schools while tending her own, she lived on little else but bread and water until employed at Baptist College. Helped by a loan, student subsidies from government, and private contributions she now has five Mu Kuang English Schools providing kindergarten, primary and secondary education for some 4,000 poor children.

Education and welfare work involved her with Hong Kong’s workers. In letters to the newspapers in Hong Kong and England, she exposed their long working hours, crowded living conditions and rampant tuberculosis. Mincing no words—where restraint was the rule—the dauntless English woman incurred enemies and criticism for attacking authority

Elected to the Urban Council in 1963, she became something of an unofficial ombudsman. In 1966 elements of the police, stung by her charges of corruption, sought unsuccessfully to accuse Mrs. ELLIOTT of paying children to throw stones while demonstrating. Four years later she called the administration to account for allowing police a “monopoly on corruption” with its Anti-Bribery Bill. It is to the credit of the Hong Kong Government and the press that the public record has since substantiated her charges and remedial action has been vested in an official Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Believing “the only way for self-fulfillment is to serve others,” Mrs. ELLIOTT lived austerely in one room of a school building until 1972 when a benefactor donated better accommodation in the new building. She inspects her schools each morning and teaches 16 periods a week. As an Urban Council member she keeps “open office” twice weekly in two settlement blocks, handling over 300 complaints and appeals each month. Continuing to speak out and write for “those whose plight is most readily forgotten,” she cites specific cases to illustrate shortcomings in housing, welfare services, playgrounds, bus service to crowded tenement areas, or licensing for hawkers. Supporters now include businessmen, government officers and academics who concede this soft-voiced, 62-year-old lady may sometimes be excessive in her challenges but performs invaluable service in mustering public opinion for public good in government.

In electing ELSIE HUME ELLIOTT to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes her crusade for justice, making the Hong Kong Government, of which she is an elected member, more responsive to the less affluent.

May I first convey my sympathy, and, I am sure, the sympathy of our Hong Kong people, to your country, and especially to the disaster victims, after the tragic losses they suffered in the recent earthquakes in the Philippines. I applaud the words of your President, Mr. Marcos, that the people will practice self-reliance to rebuild what can be rebuilt of what has been destroyed. Self-reliance is the hallmark of a strong character and of an independent nation, and I am happy that your country has the pride and determination of self-reliance. This matter is my major concern on this visit to the Philippines.

And now may I express my thanks to those who selected me for this treasured award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award. The honor is the greater because this is an Asian award and I am a European. The happiest years of my life have been spent among Asian people, and I have come to respect them for their culture and spiritual values; from them I have learned much. I regret the harm that has been done to Asian countries by European nations in the past, and I trust that understanding and closer association will result in greater harmony of East and West.

An Award like this makes one stop to evaluate oneself; it makes one feel humble that others should place such value on one’s work, and this spurs one on to greater efforts to merit the honor bestowed.

Your late President Ramon Magsaysay, whose birthday I am pleased to celebrate with you today, set an example of service to the people that we would all do well to emulate. It is to me the greatest honor that my name should be in this way associated with so fine a person as the late President.

It is cited in the Award that it is given to me in recognition of my “crusade for justice, making the Hong Kong Government. . .more responsive to the less affluent.” In this crusade I have not worked alone, but have been assisted or encouraged by people of many nationalities. To those who have shared in my work I now pay tribute; they must all share in this recognition today.

I also wish to pay tribute to my own father, who died 30 years ago. He taught me from childhood the equality of all men and how to serve the community, especially the less affluent. I only wish he could be present today to share this honor with me.

People often ask me why I do this work which appears to them so frustrating I have no real answer to that question except to say that I can think of no happier pathway in life than to lift the burden of my fellowmen. For my part, I find it difficult to understand the person who spends his life fettered with the chains of money, property, business and other perishable goods. Such people are never really happy or satisfied no matter how many their possessions, because they are always anxious and afraid. I could not enjoy such a life. Man was born with a soul that cannot be satisfied with perishable goods which only clutter his life. Man was made for man, and he can never satisfy his inmost needs until he is at peace with man, sharing the joys and sorrows of others of his kind.

In my life I have received many rewards. For example, the reward of being able to change a government policy to improve conditions for the people, and the simple reward of a smiling face or a word of thanks from people assisted in their problems. And now, to add to those joys, I am receiving this public and much-prized Award, which will encourage me to further and greater efforts for the people of Hong Kong of any other community of which I may be a member.

Japan today is thought of as a giant among industrialized states with an avid commitment to everything new. Yet, despite price supports for some produce, toward farmers and fishermen attitudes persist reminiscent of the feudal view—“neither let the peasant live nor die.” Farmers, in turn, continuing to believe it is their lot to suffer, encourage their children to leave the land. An offshoot of this belief is that farmers often seek medical assistance too late for effective treatment; they are further deterred by fear of the profit motivation of many city doctors and hospitals.

TOSHIKAZU WAKATSUKI is that rare kind of person for whom backwardness offers opportunity. A graduate of Tokyo Imperial University, he was drafted into the Army in 1937 and assigned to Manchuria. Invalided out for tuberculosis after two years, he was later jailed for his socialist anti-war activities. Upon his release in early 1945 his revered professor Dr. Kikuo Otsuki found constructive obscurity for him as one of two doctors at a small clinic supported by a farmers’ cooperative at Usuda, in the mountainous rice and fruit growing country of Nagano Prefecture northwest of Tokyo.

At this remote, very simply equipped clinic, WAKATSUKI, in 1946, performed the first surgical operation in Japan for tubercular spinal caries and organized the first blood bank. His goal became total health care to farmer families on a 5-3-2 formula: “five parts of our ability are devoted to care of inpatients, three parts to outpatients and two parts to outside-the-hospital medical care and public health and hygiene service.” In over 150 papers for national and international medical journals and conferences he has shared his trials and errors in rural doctoring and his central finding: farmers’ support can be gained by educating them to an awareness of their needs and by offering them high-level medical practice. In a popular play he elaborated his philosophy that a physician’s true professional satisfaction comes only through honest and devoted service to patients.

In 30 years Dr. WAKATSUKI’s enterprise has become the 937-bed Saku Central Hospital in Usuda, with 60 full-time physicians, 300 nurses and an equal number of other staff. Clinic and hospital branches are located in Komoro and Koumi. A new National Training Center for Rural Health–for doctors, nurses and dietitians–will complement the School of Nursing, the Institute of Rural Medicine–researching the environmental hazards of farmers, the Rural Health Study Center, and the headquarters of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine.

More significant than these splendid facilities–sponsored by the Welfare Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Nagano Prefecture– is their pervading spirit. Visitors remark upon the easy camaraderie between staff and patients, credited by associates to 65-year-old Dr. WAKATSUKI’s conviction that “rural medicine should be social medicine.” Increasingly, the movement emphasizes preventive medicine and “well aging.” Indicative of community response is the Hospital Festival celebrated every spring by the 15,000 citizens of Usuda and their prefectural neighbors. Morning, noon and evening chiming of bells, and the organ of Saku Central Hospital playing the melodious “Together with Farmers,” elicit lifted heads and smiling countenances from the country people.

In electing TOSHIKAZU WAKATSUKI to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his bringing to his country’s most depressed citizens the highest type of technically competent and humanely inspired health care, thus creating a model for rural medicine.

I am greatly honored to have been designated recipient of the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. Attending this presentation ceremony, I must frankly confess that my conscience still asks me whether my past achievements really deserve this recognition. But please be assured, Trustees of the Foundation, that I will share it with my rural medicine colleagues who recognize the categorical imperative of delivering increased and sophisticated health care to millions of medically underprivileged people in Asia.

My selection newly awakes me to our grave task, particularly when I give thought to the late President Magsaysay’s devotion to rural reconstruction. When your government hosted the U.N. Community Development Conference for South and Southeast Asia in 1954, he said: “The spirit of self-help is sweeping our rural communities . . . the role of the government is simply to tap the creative energies of our people and to provide the means by which their desire for improvement can be translated into permanent benefit. It is for this purpose that our health, education and social welfare programs are being reoriented with emphasis on self-help.”

Serving as director of a general hospital in the middle of the Japanese equivalent of the Alps, I was deeply impressed by these sagacious words as I was keenly aware of the necessity of awakening people to the protection of their health on their own initiative.

It has already been 31 years since I left the hospital of Imperial Tokyo University and began working as a surgeon in the present hospital. My dearest hope was to protect the health of medically underprivileged rural people, but again I must confess that I have not fully realized this ideal of mine. I am aware that the road along which I am trodding is thorny, and God knows whether I shall be able to arrive at the destination in my lifetime. If there were anything good about myself at all, it would be my determination to spend my lifetime deep in the mountains for the sake of rural people.

In recent years, the technological developments in every field of medicine have been spectacular. On the other hand, one is compelled to note that many problems have yet to be solved in respect of the delivery of medical and health care to outlying areas. Gravest of these is the formulation of measures to cope with the so-called doctorless villages. Rural people are not blessed with sophisticated medical care. To make the matter worse, their communities are fraught with hazardous environmental conditions, and when their economy is developed at a rapid pace, new problems developing from urbanization also endanger their health.

The staff of our rural hospital has been striving to provide sustained community medicine for the benefit of local people with their cooperation. No rural hospitals could fulfill their mission simply by taking care of patients. Considerable energy must be devoted to outpatient services, to be sure, but there is need to evolve what we call “village health care,” in which physicians are sent out to engage in public health work, go round doctorless villages and provide mass health screening. These activities must be preventive in nature, rather than being satisfied with the early detection of diseases. To evolve such care there is need for deep understanding about and sympathy for rural people. In this context, health education to rural people turns out to be self-education in humanism to us medical care workers. It is with this philosophy in mind that we are striving to develop movements for the protection of rural peoples’ health through the mass media, based on our past advances, and also to reorient physicians, public health nurses and livelihood guidance workers in rural medicine. Folk legend says genesis here in the Philippines was by Divine Wind. The bamboo was split, and there was a man called malakas, for strong, and a woman called maganda, for beautiful. Each had a role to play. In rural medical and health care, too, medical care workers and inhabitants have mutual roles to play.

Once again, I must express my most sincere appreciation for being invited to Manila for the presentation of the Magsaysay Award. Nothing will give me greater pleasure than if the achievements of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine prove to be of use in protection of rural health in your country during the course of our future interchanges. We are in full sympathy with the devotion of Filipinos to the construction of a peaceful country since your independence from long years of colonial rules. I, as a Japanese citizen, must deeply apologize for all the atrocities committed by the Japanese military in your country during World War II. When Japan’s reparations to the Philippines were completed last month, President Marcos generously stated that it is time people stopped talking about the dreadful war. We, the Japanese, must admonish ourselves not to presume upon his generosity.

Last but not least, I wish to express my deepest sympathy to the earthquake and tidal wave victims in Mindanao. I have asked the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation to set aside half of my prize as a donation for their relief.

Youth compose the most precious resource in every country yet remain in many lands among the most underutilized. Especially is this so in Asia where young people make up more than one-half of the total population, and unemployment or underemployment are often the lot of the majority. Without jobs in sight, young folk are easily discouraged from using fully opportunities for self-development. In turn, they lack the skills that would make them useful. Thwarted in their ambitions, they fail to discover the creative satisfaction of disciplined, productive work, and their country’s development suffers the loss of their latent talents.

Fourteen years ago when Brother HERMENEGILD JOSEPH first looked at the desolate slopes of scrub jungle surrounding the water tank on Orange Hill of Ragama Town Council near Colombo, his mind’s eye saw beyond the inauspicious appearance. With imaginative determination he chose this 44.53-hectare site for the Brothers of Christian Schools to provide refuge and redirection for very poor, orphaned and handicapped boys, and delinquents released to them from correctional institutions. Diyagala Boys’ Town opened in 1963 in makeshift buildings with an entering class of 25 youngsters.

Today the hillsides have been transformed. Neat gardens, farms, dormitory, workshops, livestock and poultry enclosures, and a chapel all tell of contributions in kind and effort to create the Sri Lanka Technical Institute. This certificate-granting arm of Diyagala Boys’ Town is schooling for a responsible life 315 youths, aged 14 to 20, in scientific agriculture and practical trades. More than education, it provides a rounded, character-forming experience with a guiding philosophy expressed in the motto, “Deeds Not Words.”

Diyagala Boys’ Town cooperates with the government assault on unemployment that seeks alternatives to the futile hunt for white collar jobs by cultivating pride in the art and dignity of the craftsman’s and farmer’s skills and performance. Hard manual work in field and workshop under strict, competent supervision is part of the four-year curriculum. Income generated from machine and carpentry shops, farms and livestock covers most running costs. “Corporations,” with rotating membership of as many boys as a job requires, are accountable for every activity from housekeeping, water management, meat processing, a bakery, crops, roads and equipment to sports. A point system instills cooperation and healthy competition among these teams. Responsible democracy is taught by participation in the tribunal that judges guilt for wrongdoing.

With a waiting list of over 2,000 seeking entrance, word has spread that the Institute offers a future, for its skilled, diligent graduates are readily employed. Neighbors come to learn and buy planting material at a highland extension center raising seed, potatoes and vegetables, and at other stations specializing in rice, coconuts and mixed-farming. All are a tribute to the nine De La Salle Brothers and a lay staff of 10. Special credit belongs to the dynamic 60-year-old French Founder Director whose thorough planning, shrewd enlistment of local and foreign support, and efficient organization has permitted rapid progression from land clearing to creating a thriving showcase of the power of teaching boys to take confidence in themselves and their work.

In electing Rev. Brother HERMENEGILD JOSEPH to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his effective teaching of skills, values and discipline that build underprivileged and delinquent boys into self-respecting, useful citizens.

Much as I shun honors and praises, I am grateful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for having studied and found to be of service to society the methods of training and youth formation I have been working on for some time, especially in helping the underprivileged youth of Sri Lanka. All those who have rallied round me should see in this Award a public recognition of the worthiness of our work and of their involvement in the cause it serves. For myself and all my supporters, I express humble and very sincere thanks to the Trustees of the Foundation. I pay my respects to the late President Ramon Magsaysay, a man of great heart and wonderful vision, and I congratulate all those who have helped keep the spirit of this great President alive and effective by maintaining so very successfully this fine Foundation. It is a great honor, indeed, for me and my associates to be included in the distinguished fraternity of the Magsaysay Awardees.

As an educator, I started at 17 years of age in a very poor school in southern France—my own country—with a class of 104 lads of various ages and degrees of poverty—poor in the goods of this world, in brain potential and poorer still in parents’ attention. To find those lads were happy only in class indelibly impressed me. The sight of them wasting their time roaming the streets on vacations and coming back to me on Mondays, half wild, prodded me to organize games, work where together we did very simple jobs, Scout camps and excursions. Watching them become interested, keen, resourceful, and helpful to each other, I began thinking that something should be done for poor and abandoned children instead of just blaming them.

When duty took me to teach more fortunate children in Lebanon, England, and Sri Lanka, I managed to run extracurricular activities for “retarded” boys to which large numbers of “outsiders,” or deprived boys, were attracted. Studying their cases, their needs, aspirations and potentialities, I discovered a “bad boy” is made by circumstances, mostly by poverty or rejection by those who should have attended to him. I came to know that given proper chances and care nearly all boys classed as “rejects” or “dangers” would rise to be excellent young men, good husbands and fathers, successful workers, reliable citizens, even heroes. I also saw that even the type of education we were imparting to the better off was too academic and impractical. My quest for something different to help the unfortunate led me to conclude that homes, centers, refuges—call them as you like—must be created where embittered and frustrated youths could find occupation, guidance and training, where men of dedication and vision could be their understanding friends and helpers, share their work, food, sports, art and social life, love them and create around them the atmosphere, the society, the family spirit needed to gain their sympathetic involvement.

In my experience, a study of any delinquency case will uncover a desire for “activity,” for “participation,” for “doing.” I had noted such youngsters, even if they cannot express it, aspire for a way of life, not necessarily the easier one, which will allow them to fulfill themselves and even be in a position to help others—an old, bedridden mother, younger brothers or sisters they know to be in distress, or a needy friend met when they themselves ran the streets. Indirectly, it is an aspiration to serve the larger community, the country.

Feeling I must be ready to attend to these inner good dispositions of underprivileged children, I planned a home where such youths would be provided with opportunities to improve themselves. They would be trained in jobs in agriculture, industries, trades. They would be further educated and their character formed. They would be given a sense of duty, honesty, love for work well done. They would be given a proper vision of what life truly is. They would be shown the correct way to self-sufficiency and proper use of time and money. They would be trained to civic life, to love others and country. Little by little they would be made to realize they have a good role to play. When, at long last, I was asked to set up a home for orphans and uncared for youths, my joy knew no bounds. There were to be many difficulties and there were failures, but we had the will and found a way.

At the start we had the good fortune of the approval and encouragement of the then Provincial of the De La Salle Brothers in Sri Lanka, Very Rev. Bro. Vincent Joseph; of His Eminence Cardinal Cooray of Colombo; of the government of Sri Lanka through the ministers of Social Services, Industries and Agriculture; of the then Director of Agriculture, Dr. W. Joachim. Similar support came from successive Provincials, Rev. Bros. Lawrence and Flavian, and especially the Assistant Superior General of the De La Salle Brothers for Asia, the Very Rev. Bro. Michael Jacques who is with us today deputizing for the Superior General himself, Very Rev. Bro. Pablo-Manuel. Throughout the years I have been privileged to have the assistance of exceptional young men. One who started with me, Rev. Bro. Philip, is still there and has endeared himself to all by his devotion and the efficiency he brings to every aspect of our campus work. Then there is the chorus of friends and philanthropic organizations from Sri Lanka and many countries who have helped us generously. They all share this Award.

Though Diyagala Boys’ Town was meticulously prepared in all its details, our work at the beginning was very hard indeed. We three animators and 25 half-starved boys of all castes and creeds lived together in cadjan sheds, cleared jungle, leveled land, grew a few vegetables, reared poultry, pigs and goats, cooked our food and cut bricks and cabouks for our initial buildings. But the boys could see and take pride in the town we were building ourselves and very soon we were a family community where each had a role. Before the year ended help came from international organizations—like MISEREOR of West Germany—to equip workshops and build kitchens, refectories and dormitories according to plan. Most encouraging was to see the youngsters accept the hardships and discipline because they felt they were fast improving their chances in life. Hope had been restored to them. What matters is that the boy feels he is loved, that he is wanted, that he is given responsibility and that he is trusted. These are the thirsts and aspirations of youth today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow. They are those of underprivileged children most acutely. It is the duty of our personnel, as it should be of all those wishing to achieve success with underprivileged children, to be firm but lavish with encouragement; to be experts in instruction, training, guidance; to love to work in association with the boys, and to share in dialogue, planning, execution and evaluation of results. They must be organizers, animators and guides but without excluding the boys themselves. Thus, in the true sense of service each is contributing, defining together the reasons for success or failure, suggesting improvement, working toward shared goals, and understanding his own duty and the common good. Our system—theoretical and perhaps difficult as it may seem—is both simple and effective. It is a training for involvement and responsibility. Today we feel very happy that the Foundation has given the Award for Public Service to my humble self. This is a wonderful encouragement to me and my associates and helpers.