Chronic hunger, high infant mortality, isolation and a sense of hopelessness was the lot of most inhabitants of the 110-odd islands of Indonesia’s southeast Nusa Tenggara Timur province. Cursed by the nation’s longest and most erratic dry season — broken occasionally by heavy rainstorms — and miserable rocky soil, the farmers (80 percent of the population) were dependent on slash and burn methods of cultivation and could seldom grow enough corn for subsistence. The coastal communities on the three larger islands (Sumba, Flores, Timur), trading sporadically with the modern economies on Java, Bali and Sulawesi, were handicapped by lack of port facilities and roads into the interior. 

Thus, excluded from Indonesia’s growing prosperity, the islanders felt themselves forgotten by the national leaders in Jakarta. Native young people seeking a beuer future left the province. Outside investors had little interest in using the idle wild grassland for cattle grazing, or in exploiting the abundant fishing grounds in the adjoining waters because processing and shipping infrastructure did not exist. 

It was difficult for ALOYSIUS BENEDICTUS MBOI and NAFSIAH MBOI-WALINONO — both medical practitioners — to leave the comforts and professional and financial attractions of Jakarta for the backward province to which he was appointed governor in 1978, even though he had been born to a rajah family of the province, in Ruteng, Flores, in 1935, and she to a noble house of Sengkang in neighboring South Sulawesi, in 1940. They met in her first and his fourth year in medical college where he was president of the Student Council, and they were married when she graduated. 

Entering the Army Medical Corps, Dr. BEN MBOI broadened his professional skills with special training in public health. Advanced study took him to Belgium, Norway, West Germany and Holland before he promoted to colonel and head of the army’s Preventive Medicine Institute. Dr. NAFSIAH MBOI took graduate courses in pediatrics in Belgium and Holland. She became an ardent practitioner of socially conscious medicine and led in mobilizing women to create effective health organizations. 

Since moving to the provincial capital of Kupang, where BEN is now serving his second five-year term as governor, this couple has initiated dramatic change in prospects for the province. Food — and water for growing crops — was the new governor’s first priority. Where government agencies responsible for teaching and assisting farmers had often been moribund, he enthused their staffs with a sense of direction and purpose that has helped farmers make the province self-sufficient in grain for the past three years. Repeated trips to remote villages convinced him that better access was essential and his skillful persuasion in Jakarta resulted in funding to build over 1,000 kilometers of blacktop roads and more gravel feeder roads. Most vital is his instilling educators, technicians and officials with a contagious perception of what they can do with will and work. 

So-called  “child killers” became an urgent concern of NAFSIAH, who became director of the province’s community health services. Neonatal tetanus, gastroenteritis and measles were the major causes of the mortality of infants under the age of one year, reportedly exceeding 124 deaths per 1,000. NAFSIAH vitalized the Village Family Welfare Movement and Dharma Wanita, the organization of wives of civil servants; a growing women’s cooperative movement emerged as a result of her leadership. She also established a provincial board for coordination and advancement of nongovernmental efforts in the field of social development, bringing to these organizations recognition, self-respect, information and funds. The Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association came alive with new outreach. 

The gregarious, jolly governor and his enterprising wife agree that the work has only begun. When they first arrived in Kupang he challenged his staff: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” The couple’s infectious energy and optimism inspired the answers: “us” and “now.” 

In electing Governor ALOYSIUS BENEDICTUS MBOI and Dr. NAFSIAH MBOI-WALINONO to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes their open-hearted invigoration of government and cooperating agencies, bringing practical rural progress and new self-motivation to nearly three million villagers in Indonesia’s bleakest province.

This is a very historic moment for my wife and me, for the people and government of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), even for the people and government of Indonesia. As such, I request that, in the Indonesian tradition, we bow our heads to pray and to thank God for this blessing, and for allowing us to come together this evening. 

Let us also pray for our forebears and founding fathers who have shown us the way, who have given us values by which we live, as well as the spirit to strive to the best of our abilities for the good of our fellow citizens. In particular we give thanks for the example of two great Filipino heroes, Jose Rizal and Ramon Magsaysay. May they rest in peace, a peace well earned through their service to humanity. 

News of the Ramon Magsaysay Award came to us as unexpectedly as lightning — first from friends who listened to the Voice of America and later from others hearing of it on Radio Australia. We did not believe the news, as we did not feel deserving of any special honor nor did we expect such recognition for what we have been doing. Frankly, even as I stand before you this evening, I still feel myself unworthy of this prestigious Award. 

Be that as it may, as a participant in these ceremonies, I sincerely wish to thank you for the honor which, in my opinion, is a recognition and acknowledgment of our national strategy, our policies, and our programs, particularly towards village people and people in more remote areas. Perhaps more than anything else, it is a recognition of our on-going efforts over a period of years, rather than recognition of particular accomplishments. 

I say our “efforts,” because it is my observation that in fact not much has yet been achieved either tangible or intangible. There is still a long way to go to reach the goal of fully realized national freedom. 

Leadership in a developing country is not an easy task, and leaders are not in an easy position. Leadership is a blessing, it is a call, it is a privilege, and it is an honor. At the same time it is a responsibility and a challenge. 

Leaders and leadership must be adequate to meet challenges, and relevant to the environment. Leadership must be adaptive to specific situations — it must try to adjust ideas, decisions and efforts to the condition of the people and to their aspirations. It is not an easy task, particularly in a heterogeneous social situation, with sometimes overlapping and sometimes conflicting loyalties and ties, both vertically and horizontally. 

Having a background as a doctor — a rural doctor who has lived close to the people and is sensitive to their problems — can in itself be a problem. One is sometimes almost too sensitive to be a leader. Fortunately, I have had a rather unique background, being not only a doctor, but an officer in the army special forces and a public administrator. These separate experiences have been very useful to me in my service in NTT. 

But dilemmas often arise and cannot be avoided. Leaders must often face misunderstanding, perhaps cynicism and skepticism. As Edmund Burke advised long ago: “Those who carry on great public duties should be proof against fatiguing delays, mortifying disappointments, shocking insults and, worst of all, misunderstanding from the ignorant.” 

In facing the trials of leadership these words give one support and encouragement. 

If development is to mean total human development — individual as well as societal — then a plural society like NTT poses a real problem and challenge to leadership. We believe there is only one approach which can work, the approach of participative development. Although many would say it runs the risk of being too idealistic, and will take too long for any single leader to witness the results of his efforts, nonetheless it is the approach we have tried to apply. 

This is the reason I said previously that I have not observed any remarkable results as a consequence of our efforts during my term as governor. We have taken the long, slow, participatory approach. 

I am indeed honored to be the recipient of this prestigious Award, the more so because I share it with my beloved wife. It is an acknowledgment which makes us more confident that we are on the right track and that we must continue the long journey of development –human development, institutional development, national development. We wish to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and the Board of Trustees for selecting w, among perhaps thousands of eligible people, to receive this prestigious Award. 

We would also like to thank those who recommended us in the belief that we have achieved something, and the president and government of Indonesia which granted w permission to receive this Award and which has also supported us and given us the opportunity to work with the people of our province.

Chronic hunger, high infant mortality, isolation and a sense of hopelessness was the lot of most inhabitants of the 110-odd islands of Indonesia’s southeast Nusa Tenggara Timur province. Cursed by the nation’s longest and most erratic dry season — broken occasionally by heavy rainstorms — and miserable rocky soil, the farmers (80 percent of the population) were dependent on slash and burn methods of cultivation and could seldom grow enough corn for subsistence. The coastal communities on the three larger islands (Sumba, Flores, Timur), trading sporadically with the modern economies on Java, Bali and Sulawesi, were handicapped by lack of port facilities and roads into the interior. 

Thus, excluded from Indonesia’s growing prosperity, the islanders felt themselves forgotten by the national leaders in Jakarta. Native young people seeking a beuer future left the province. Outside investors had little interest in using the idle wild grassland for cattle grazing, or in exploiting the abundant fishing grounds in the adjoining waters because processing and shipping infrastructure did not exist. 

It was difficult for ALOYSIUS BENEDICTUS MBOI and NAFSIAH MBOI-WALINONO — both medical practitioners — to leave the comforts and professional and financial attractions of Jakarta for the backward province to which he was appointed governor in 1978, even though he had been born to a rajah family of the province, in Ruteng, Flores, in 1935, and she to a noble house of Sengkang in neighboring South Sulawesi, in 1940. They met in her first and his fourth year in medical college where he was president of the Student Council, and they were married when she graduated. 

Entering the Army Medical Corps, Dr. BEN MBOI broadened his professional skills with special training in public health. Advanced study took him to Belgium, Norway, West Germany and Holland before he promoted to colonel and head of the army’s Preventive Medicine Institute. Dr. NAFSIAH MBOI took graduate courses in pediatrics in Belgium and Holland. She became an ardent practitioner of socially conscious medicine and led in mobilizing women to create effective health organizations. 

Since moving to the provincial capital of Kupang, where BEN is now serving his second five-year term as governor, this couple has initiated dramatic change in prospects for the province. Food — and water for growing crops — was the new governor’s first priority. Where government agencies responsible for teaching and assisting farmers had often been moribund, he enthused their staffs with a sense of direction and purpose that has helped farmers make the province self-sufficient in grain for the past three years. Repeated trips to remote villages convinced him that better access was essential and his skillful persuasion in Jakarta resulted in funding to build over 1,000 kilometers of blacktop roads and more gravel feeder roads. Most vital is his instilling educators, technicians and officials with a contagious perception of what they can do with will and work. 

So-called  “child killers” became an urgent concern of NAFSIAH, who became director of the province’s community health services. Neonatal tetanus, gastroenteritis and measles were the major causes of the mortality of infants under the age of one year, reportedly exceeding 124 deaths per 1,000. NAFSIAH vitalized the Village Family Welfare Movement and Dharma Wanita, the organization of wives of civil servants; a growing women’s cooperative movement emerged as a result of her leadership. She also established a provincial board for coordination and advancement of nongovernmental efforts in the field of social development, bringing to these organizations recognition, self-respect, information and funds. The Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association came alive with new outreach. 

The gregarious, jolly governor and his enterprising wife agree that the work has only begun. When they first arrived in Kupang he challenged his staff: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” The couple’s infectious energy and optimism inspired the answers: “us” and “now.” 

In electing Governor ALOYSIUS BENEDICTUS MBOI and Dr. NAFSIAH MBOI-WALINONO to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes their open-hearted invigoration of government and cooperating agencies, bringing practical rural progress and new self-motivation to nearly three million villagers in Indonesia’s bleakest province.

Mr. Chief Justice, Mrs. Magsaysay, Fellow Awardees, Excellencies, Trustees, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is an honor to be here with you this evening and to be part of these ceremonies simultaneously honoring the memory of the late Ramon Magsaysay, a great champion of democracy and the dignity of mankind, and the current acts of people who still care. 

Let me start by invoking the spirit of the man whose memory we keep alive here, this evening. Were he with us I feel certain he would remind us that we now honor, the awaking of a people, the rebirth of hope, the evolution of a growing sense of efficacy among ordinary people, particularly among women, and the emergence of new organizations to serve community needs. 

Then it would be clear that no individual can be singled out as “the one who did it.” Certainly, in NTT he would be right. What has been accomplished and what is honored here is the result of many people’s efforts — people sharing in the adventure of development. 

In responding to the citation I would like to share something of our journey since arriving in the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur in July 1978, a journey which started, as far as I was concerned, very much on the dark side of the mountain. 

Honor and duty notwithstanding, as my husband and I left Jakarta for NH I felt that we were giving up rather too much and the task ahead was rather too daunting. I had no sense at the time of how much I would learn — personally and professionally, how rewarding and fulfilling the job would be. Certainly, never did it occur to us that we would receive such an overwhelming honor as the Ramon Magsaysay Award, nor that there would be people who felt such would be justified. 

First impressions upon arrival in NTT did nothing to relieve me. It was July, mid-point in our dry season when the environment becomes more desolate with each passing day. 

To make matters worse, one heard repeatedly that the people were almost as barren, hopeless, and as unpromising as the environment. 

Then one day I suddenly saw beyond the bareness. I notice the beautiful bougainvillea rising from the rocks, thriving and creating splashes of color and beauty, giving life to the scene. It seemed to send a clear message if I would but understand that no matter how bleak the situation, one can find sustenance and bring forth beauty. No matter how difficult the situation, one must persist in giving of oneself, neither counting the cost nor expecting return. This was the task : to keep hope alive. 

That having become clear, the doctor in me began to take over — observing, analyzing, and hypothesizing. 

By assignment and out of a desire to help my husband in his work, my particular responsibility was concerned with the situation of women. But where and how to begin was not clear. 

So we set out to get the information needed to make those decisions. We traveled extensively, seeking opportunity for discussion with village people about whom and from whom I had the most to learn. I listened — with my eyes, with my ears, with my heart. We asked endless questions and prayed for insight. 

Gradually, it became clear that to be effective we must focus our efforts on six interrelated matters: 1) Expanding activity of benefit to women at the village level; 2) Enticing women — particularly those with leadership potential — to rise to the challenge of our time and the work to be done in NTT; 3) Improving cooperation between men and women in all aspects of development work; 4) Institution building within the women’s movement and the non-governmental social development field; 5) Building bridges for dialogue, promoting mutual respect and understanding of the complementarity between government and community efforts in NTT; 6) Identification and attracting new resources — human and financial — to help meet these special needs. 

The activities and institutions mentioned in the citation are children of that conviction. 

In time, men and women in many parts of the province came to share our vision, to improve it, to refine it and in the process we have all become winners. To the extent that we have struggled together and made some progress, to that extent has the humanity in all of us been increased. 

Therefore I take this opportunity to express my profound thanks to the board of Trustees of the Magsaysay Foundation not for an honor done me personally, but for the honor paid through me to the efforts of women and men throughout NTT and beyond, people who have worked, and continue to work, to improve our community. 

Finally, in closing, I thank the Foundation for the honor paid the working partnership of a husband and wife whose virtue, if there be such, is caring and trying; who, if it is given to them, would be as bougainvillea in a parched land. Thank you.

History does not teach fatalism. It teaches that there are moments when the will and work of a handful of free men and women can break through and shape a new society. Between 1983 and 1986 those in charge of RADIO VERITAS played a key role in mobilizing the people’s power for a remarkably peaceful transition in authority. This performance encourages the Foundation to recognize a collective effort in a category normally restricted to individuals. 

The Philippines is heir to the great tradition of freedom of the press and airwaves. Although frequently abused, this freedom remains the ultimate guardian of human liberty. During both Japan’s military occupation in World War II and the harsh era of President Ferdinand Marcos’ authoritarianism, expectations of free expression shaped the actions of writers and their audiences. Many suffered for this, either through incarceration or self-chosen banishment. Some merely endured with frustration or anger. 

The beginnings of RADIO VERITAS were not auspicious. Other religious groups were active in broadcasting when in 1962 the University of Santo Tomas with the approval of the Philippine Congress transferred its license and equipment to the Philippine Radio Educational and Information Center, under the chairmanship of Rufino Cardinal Santos, to establish a Catholic Asian broadcasting system. The Federal Republic of Germany provided for three-fourths of the initial cost (short-wave equipment and installation) and later gave additional assistance, as did Australian bishops and others. Customs delays, loss of equipment and materials enroute, and bad weather slowed construction, but RADIO VERITAS was finally inaugurated in 1969. It pledged to broadcast “everything true, noble, good and pure or worthy of praise.”

 In 1973 its overseas short-wave transmitters broke down and were officially closed. The previous year martial law had been declared in the Philippines, which inhibited free expression, by the media. 

There was a new beginning for RADIO VERITAS in 1974-75 under the leadership of then archbishop and now cardinal, Jaime Sin. He was financed by the German Catholic Social Aid Fund and the Pontifical Society for Propagation of the Faith and by a large number of Asian and Philippine bishops. By 1979 the overseas sector was broadcasting in six languages and receiving 45,000 letters annually from listeners. Today it broadcasts in 14 languages. RADIO VERITAS in the Philippines, however, continued to struggle with programming and budgetary constraints. 

It was the coverage of the assassination of former Senator Benigno Aquino when he was landing at the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983-that made the reputation of RADIO VERITAS. Listeners to the station, which was broadcasting live from the airport, heard the immediate news of the shooting of Aquino on the ramp, and listened to an on-the-scene interview with his brother-in-law, an experienced broadcaster, who had been accompanying him. VERITAS continued to report on the public revulsion that grew over the ensuing days and years. Other radio and television stations for the most part controlled by the administration or presidential ?cronies,? failed or feared to match this bold candor. 

Coverage by RADIO VERITAS during and after the presidential election on February 7,1986, provided much of the public exposure which enabled the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections to challenge the tabulations of the government?s Commission on Elections. It also aroused the anger of Filipinos who learned how they were being cheated of their franchise. Most of the other media outlets remained captive of the administration. 

As the drama of the people’s revolt unfolded over the next 18 days, it was RADIO VERlTAS, with its dedicated editorial staff, broadcasters and technicians, which kept the public informed. It motivated the hundreds of thousands of citizens who marched the streets and blocked the movement of army tanks. After its powerful transmitters were wrecked, it used a backup facility to relay the message “that the people would triumph.” And so they did. 

In electing RADIO VERITAS to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes its crucial role in using truth to depose an oppressive and corrupt regime and restore Filipino faith in the electoral process.

In the early 1970s RADIO VERITAS started identifying itself as “the station that cares” implying that its programs were intended to uplift listeners socially, intellectually, psychologically and spiritually. Through the years, the station tried to show it cared by providing information that gave all sides of an event, in contrast to the one-sided coverage the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos wanted the media to present. It tried to show it cared by providing listeners a forum to air their opinions, while other radio stations kept away from comments that might anger the government. It tried to show it cared by presenting Christian reflections on the events and the situations faced by the nation. 

While our listeners saw us as the station that cares, the Marcos government looked on VERITAS as the “station that scares.” There were countless instances when we received warnings from the government telling us to tone down our broadcasts or suffer being sabotaged or even closed. But despite these threats the announcers and the staff braved the odds and took the risk that the station might be closed and they themselves arrested. Like other ordinary human beings, we were on many occasions torn between toning down the broadcasts because of fear, and presenting the facts as we saw them because of conscience. But we always ended up by deciding to go on with our coverage, often with our knees shaking and our “stomachs full of butterflies.” The Christian values of truth and justice gave us the courage to proceed. 

In 1983, after the assassination of Marcos’ opponent Benigno Aquino, VERITAS identified its radio band number (846) as “the number of truth.” Only a few doubted its claim. As it kept the people informed, however, its existence became increasingly endangered, but we on the staff knew that the people were solidly behind us. We knew that, through the strength of the people, there was hope for the nation to grow stronger. This was evident during the hotly disputed election of February 7, 1986 and the events that followed. When the Marcos government saw how RADIO VERITAS rallied the people to support the post election coup of February 22, it decided the time had come for its voice to be silenced. In the dark dawn of February 23 the regime carried out its threat of many years and destroyed our five transmitters. 

But there exists a fraternity between radio stations, and when other stations heard what happened to our transmitters they allowed us to use theirs to broadcast our call for the people to support the coup leaders. 

Thousands of individuals expressed appreciation for our efforts to report the events as we saw them happen. Many more expressed their appreciation by sharing with us their meager earnings so that we could continue with our mission. Many groups expressed their appreciation by giving us awards. 

The Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts is for us an affirmation that a station that cares can really help uplift and give courage to the Filipinos. The life of President Magsaysay shows that he was a man who cared for the people; he also believed in their dignity and importance. With this Award RADIO VERITAS is further encouraged to serve the common man whom Magsaysay defended in his day. This Award also inspires us to continue working for the building of a free nation, as Magsaysay worked for the building of a nation in which freedom could be enjoyed and in which man could live with man in honor and peace. 

On behalf of Jaime Cardinal Sin, President and Chairman of the Board of RADIO VERITAS, other members of the board, and especially on behalf of my fellow employees, I gratefully accept this Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. It will be an inspiration to us to continue living up to our call sign: RADIO VERITAS, RADIO TRUTH.

When South Korea’s effective modernization began a quarter of a century ago, it was geared to a manufacturing for export drive that stunned the trading world with efficient production of low cost goods. Disciplined laborers working harder, often for less, than anyone else in East Asia, were a key to this success. Unlike in Japan and Taiwan, where after World War II rural progress came first, in Korea villages felt the sweeping winds of change only a decade later. Hence seekers for employment and opportunity flocked to the cities, making Seoul one of Asia’s dozen largest cities and inevitably creating massive slums where social services lagged behind the need.

Life in a slum, though devoid of most amenities, still allows a sense of family warmth and home. Networks of relatives and co-workers cushion harsh outer realities. Now even this make-do haven is threatened by booming urban land values and both public and private redevelopment schemes that mean misery to evicted slum dwellers.

Thirteen years ago, Jesuit JOHN VINCENT DALY, a Sogang University philosophy professor, decided to learn how the poor viewed life by moving into Cheong Kyei Cheon, a Seoul slum. There he met PAUL JEONG-GU JEI, recently expelled from Seoul National University for leading demonstrations. Their first partnership in community concern lasted less than a year. JEI, after readmission to the university, was soon jailed for 11 months for antigovernment activities. Not long after he was released he and DALY decided to open a community center in two rented rooms in Yahng Pyeong Dong slum. Convinced that outside problem solvers tend to impose their perceptions, the two sought to be catalysts fostering community-determined change.

Three years later Yahng Pyeong Dong was classified for redevelopment. Little compensation or concern for their rehousing was vouchsafed the residents. Fifteen families approached DALY and JEI for help.

With US$100,000 from MISEREOR, the German Catholic Social Aid Fund, and other monies from abroad, the two were able to purchase a small plot of land 12 kilometers southeast of Seoul only days before the eviction was to be carried out. DALY, JEI, and the committee of slumdwellers which they had helped create, expected fewer but finally accepted 170 families. In May 1977 all but 20 of the families moved into tents on the new site and joined in building the village of Bogum Jahri, the Place of Happiness. With three skilled members as construction supervisors, and enthused by interdenominational prayer, the newcomers completed construction of the buildings by November 1977, and the sewage system for the 170 houses was finished by the onset of winter cold in December.

From such beginnings emerged a practical system for building housing at the equivalent of US$166 per pysong, or 3.3 square meters, largely with self-made construction materials which are one-third the cost of commercial materials. The second village was Han Dok and the third MokWha. A community center was constructed within walking distance of all three.

DALY, who was born in Philo, Illinois 51 years ago, has made South Korea his home for 26 years. Both he and his partner,JEI, who was born in 1944 in South Kyong-sang province, have become participants in the daily struggles of the homeless poor. They have established the Korean Catholic Research Institute of the Urban Poor to aid slum dwellers in learning their legal rights and correcting injustices such as unwarranted or unrecompensed evictions. The two are also attempting to prove that a rich cultural heritage can be retained and enhanced by the most disadvantaged, provided there is effective community organization and local leadership.

In electing Father JOHN VINCENT DALY and PAUL JEONG-GU JEI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their education and guidance of the urban poor to create vigorous, humanly sound satellite communities.

Because of the continuing spirit of President Ramon Magsaysay manifested through the Foundation and the awards named after him and the trustees and staff we have been privileged to meet in the last two days, it is a great honor to receive the Magsaysay Award. But it is an even greater honor to receive it in 1986, the year when the people of the Philippines—and the spirit at work within them—added a new chapter to human history, giving hope and courage and light to millions of ordinary “little people” all over the world.

You may wonder what I have hanging around my neck. It is a list of the names of the 135 families who rent rooms in an area of Seoul called Sang Kyei Dong who have been resisting eviction because they have no money and they have nowhere to go. Because they are delaying the construction of new high-rise apartments which will bring a $20-30,000,000 profit to someone, on June 26 of this year the 60 or 70 women who happened to be home that day were severely beaten up. Some of them were swung about in the air until they lost consciousness; their furniture and houses were half-destroyed; some of their children were picked up and tossed through the air onto piles of debris. This went on for about five hours while some 300 riot police just stood by. When the fighting ended the police arrested the 60-70 women who had been beaten up.

I lived with these families most of July and tasted, a bit, their fear and anxiety at not knowing when the next attack would come. But I tasted a lot more their courage and dignity.

When I left Korea onJuly31 these people gave me this gift with their names on it, saying, “we want to be with you.” They are. They are here on this stage today. In fact, in my mind, there are many people here right now accepting this award: my mother, father, brother and sister and the rest of my family; Cardinal Steven Kim; the staff of organizations like MISEREOR (Federal Republic of Germany) and CEBEMO (Netherlands); the rest of our Bogum Jahri Team; the people of our three resettlement villages—Bogum Jahri, Han Dok, MokWha; the courageous people of areas like Mok Dong, ShinJeong Dong, Sa Dahng Dong, Oh Kum Dong, Ha Wang Shim Ni and Sang Kyei Dong; and the 3,000,000 people who will be made homeless if the government carries out its schedule of “redeveloping” 230 areas in Seoul by 1990.

I accept this award in their name. And I pray to God that this gold medal will give them the light to recognize their own infinite value so that they will have the tremendous courage they will need to continue to fight for their rights as human beings—to fight not out of hatred but out of love—love for themselves, love for their children and grandchildren, love for the people, culture and future of Korea.

I thank all of you—Mrs. Magsaysay, the trustees and staff of the Magsaysay Foundation—from the bottom of my heart for doing the one thing—in a sense the only thing—the urban poor of this world are longing and crying for, the thing they need most of all: you have recognized them as human beings come.

I only hope that your courage in taking this stance will prick the consciences of many governments and city planners and nudge them to take a second look at the urban poor, to see them not as faceless and troublesome statistics which must be removed to make room for “development,” not as stray dogs or pieces of furniture which can be driven away or moved around whenever someone has a chance to make a few dollars, but as people, as citizens and as human beings who have every right to a little bit of ground under their feet end a roofover their heads.

People’s power, Philippine style, shows us all that that day can come.

Life is often cruel to the disadvantaged in Asia’s swollen sluminfested cities where they are cut off from the neighborliness they traditionally knew in the rural villages. Governments and more fortunate individuals seem blind to their plight. Where discarded infants may expire by the roadside and adult corpses lie awaiting the vultures, there is scant cause for confidence in man’s progress. 

The 100 million people of Pakistan have paid the price of survival. Amidst the political trauma following World War II and the dismantling of Britain’s empire, partition in the name of religion uprooted millions, shuttling Hindus and Muslims across the Punjabi border. Wars with India and three million refugees from Russian-occupied Afghanistan have compounded internal ethnolinguistic discord. Although the Indus River Valley is one of civilization’s original and most fertile sites, the drifting poor have suffered from lawlessness, feudal tyranny and disease. 

Born a Muslim 58 years ago in Kathiawar, Gujarat, Western India, ABDUL SATTAR EDHI migrated with his moderately prosperous family to Pakistan in 1947. It was the paralysis that afflicted his mother two years later that alerted EDHI to the suffering of the sick-at a time when most medicine was unavailable. With colleagues, in 1950 he established a charitable dispensary, the Bantva Memon Dispensary. Frustrated by the conservatism of his associates he assumed full responsibility for it in 1953 and eventually established a philanthropic trust in his own name, receiving 800,000 rupees (US$160,000) in donations the first year. 

With these funds EDHI built an emergency outpatient clinic, manned by a senior medical student, and a dispensary exclusively for women and children that included a training center for nurses. There after as voluntary donations allowed, he developed services for the destitute sick, mentally handicapped and drug addicts; runaway girls from unhappy homes or miserable marriages were given work and education. These facilities have become the 12-acre Apna Ghar (Our Home) 10 miles north of Karachi in Sohrab Ghar, and the Edhi Nursing Home in the suburb of Mithadar. Together they house and care for some 1,200, of whom more than half are mental patients. They are staffed by 300 nurses and 35 doctors whose only compensation is for transportation. EDHI explains that he prefers women workers because “they are less corrupt by nature.”

The Nursing Home is managed by Mrs. BILQIS EDHI, whom ABDUL SATTAR met 20 years ago when she was working with him as a volunteer. BILQUIS oversees maternity care and adoption services for abandoned babies, a family planning clinic, an emergency center with 24-hour service by 80 ambulances, an outpatient department and a shelter for the homeless. Since a decent burial is a concern of Islam, infant and adult corpses, found by the roadside or floating in the sea, are bathed and enshrouded. Many of the 7,500 bodies have been handled by the EDHIS personally. 

Refusing offers of government assistance, even from President Zia ul-Haq, the Abdul Sattar Edhi Trust and two sister foundations rely entirely upon contributions from the public. Queues of donors provide the daily cash equivalent of US$2,000, plus gifts in kind such as chickens, sheep, goats and clothing. Van loads of food sent by the trust to victims of floods and other disasters are quickly replaced by anonymous donations. 

The EDHIS take no salary; they, their four children and her mother live modestly on the income from his earlier business investments. They pray five times a day in the Muslim tradition, and in their lives demonstrate that Islam has its roots in service to others. Their personal ministry is to the destitute. 

In electing ABDUL SATTAR EDHI and BILQIS EDDLO EDHI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes their giving substance in an Islamic society to the ancient humane commandment that thou art thy brother’s keeper.

We are grateful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting us to receive this highly prestigious Award in recognition of our humble humanitarian services. 

The human being is the finest creature of the Almighty. Unfortunately, by certain deeds, he has fallen to the lowest state. However he deserves our sympathy and attention. Serving humankind in distress is worship of God. 

We bow our heads in humility to Allah for guiding us in rendering this service to people. We began as individuals, and by God’s grace our work now is an institution. Today’s Award, I believe, is not for us as persons. It is for the services we have rendered. We will consider it as a debt, always reminding us to pay it back by more devotion to humanity. You may be interested if I briefly describe the scope of activities, steadily expanded, by our trust. 

My wife, BILQIS, runs the Center for Shelterless, including abandoned and innocent newly born babies. Some 1,039 such children have been taken care of so far by the center. Childless parents can adopt these children. Through this center, unique parent-children relationships are established on a purely humanitarian basis. 

Old, sick, crippled and shelterless persons find abode in the Edhi Home in Karachi. It currently accommodates some 1,700 such individuals. Our objective is to spread a network of homes for the shelterless in other cities of Pakistan, e.g. Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar. 

For poor and sick persons our institution provides free, emergency ambulance services. Eighty ambulances are in operation, covering all of Pakistan. At a distance of every 100 miles an Ambulance Center has been organized. At these centers a fully equipped medical team is stationed to provide temporary treatment. The Edhi Foundation has been set up to carry out the work in an orderly way and without interruption. We intend to open similar centers in other big cities in Asia: Bombay, India; Dacca, Bangladesh; Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

Three round-the-clock dispensaries and maternity homes function under the management of the Edhi Trust. Here first-aid services are provided for accident cases. Some 150,000 individuals receive these services monthly, without any obligation on their part. 

My wife looks after a free maternity home of 100 beds in the suburbs of Karachi. Over 300 delivery cases, on an average, are attended to every month. Mrs. EDHI also manages a nursing department for less educated and poor widows so that they can earn an honorable livelihood rather than extend their hands for help. These poor women are trained here for six months. During this period a stipend equivalent to US$25 is paid them per month. The women are specially trained to clean dead bodies before burial as per Islamic law. Hundreds of such women have been trained and are now earning their livelihood with respect and honor. 

Our scope of activities include picking up dead bodies wherever found and regardless of the cause of death. If no heir or relative of the deceased is found, burial is done by the trust. When it is a police case, prompt assistance of authorities is sought and burial is arranged. 

Genuinely jobless persons willing to work and earn their livelihood are provided temporary assistance equivalent to US$20 per month for food and other needs. Crippled and elderly patients are given wheelchairs, beds, crutches, bed-urine pans and urine chairs for use in their homes, at a reasonable charge when they can afford to pay, but free in genuinely destitute cases. 

It is gratifying to inform you that, with Allah’s blessings, construction of a house for shelterless girls on a plot of about six hectares is in full swing and is expected to be completed within the next two years. When finished, this house will accommodate hundreds of destitute girls. There they will be given training in driving, first-aid, maternity and child care, washing of dead bodies, and attending crippled and mentally retarded persons. 

We are obliged to the people of Pakistan who generously donate funds equivalent to over US$2 million annually, funds which provide the resources for carrying out our activities. I am happy to declare that the money from this Award will be used to establish another foundation in Pakistan. May Allah bless you and us and guide us to give our utmost to the best of all his creatures — human beings.

Life is often cruel to the disadvantaged in Asia’s swollen sluminfested cities where they are cut off from the neighborliness they traditionally knew in the rural villages. Governments and more fortunate individuals seem blind to their plight. Where discarded infants may expire by the roadside and adult corpses lie awaiting the vultures, there is scant cause for confidence in man’s progress. 

The 100 million people of Pakistan have paid the price of survival. Amidst the political trauma following World War II and the dismantling of Britain’s empire, partition in the name of religion uprooted millions, shuttling Hindus and Muslims across the Punjabi border. Wars with India and three million refugees from Russian-occupied Afghanistan have compounded internal ethnolinguistic discord. Although the Indus River Valley is one of civilization’s original and most fertile sites, the drifting poor have suffered from lawlessness, feudal tyranny and disease. 

Born a Muslim 58 years ago in Kathiawar, Gujarat, Western India, ABDUL SATTAR EDHI migrated with his moderately prosperous family to Pakistan in 1947. It was the paralysis that afflicted his mother two years later that alerted EDHI to the suffering of the sick-at a time when most medicine was unavailable. With colleagues, in 1950 he established a charitable dispensary, the Bantva Memon Dispensary. Frustrated by the conservatism of his associates he assumed full responsibility for it in 1953 and eventually established a philanthropic trust in his own name, receiving 800,000 rupees (US$160,000) in donations the first year. 

With these funds EDHI built an emergency outpatient clinic, manned by a senior medical student, and a dispensary exclusively for women and children that included a training center for nurses. There after as voluntary donations allowed, he developed services for the destitute sick, mentally handicapped and drug addicts; runaway girls from unhappy homes or miserable marriages were given work and education. These facilities have become the 12-acre Apna Ghar (Our Home) 10 miles north of Karachi in Sohrab Ghar, and the Edhi Nursing Home in the suburb of Mithadar. Together they house and care for some 1,200, of whom more than half are mental patients. They are staffed by 300 nurses and 35 doctors whose only compensation is for transportation. EDHI explains that he prefers women workers because “they are less corrupt by nature.”

The Nursing Home is managed by Mrs. BILQIS EDHI, whom ABDUL SATTAR met 20 years ago when she was working with him as a volunteer. BILQUIS oversees maternity care and adoption services for abandoned babies, a family planning clinic, an emergency center with 24-hour service by 80 ambulances, an outpatient department and a shelter for the homeless. Since a decent burial is a concern of Islam, infant and adult corpses, found by the roadside or floating in the sea, are bathed and enshrouded. Many of the 7,500 bodies have been handled by the EDHIS personally. 

Refusing offers of government assistance, even from President Zia ul-Haq, the Abdul Sattar Edhi Trust and two sister foundations rely entirely upon contributions from the public. Queues of donors provide the daily cash equivalent of US$2,000, plus gifts in kind such as chickens, sheep, goats and clothing. Van loads of food sent by the trust to victims of floods and other disasters are quickly replaced by anonymous donations. 

The EDHIS take no salary; they, their four children and her mother live modestly on the income from his earlier business investments. They pray five times a day in the Muslim tradition, and in their lives demonstrate that Islam has its roots in service to others. Their personal ministry is to the destitute. 

In electing ABDUL SATTAR EDHI and BILQIS EDDLO EDHI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes their giving substance in an Islamic society to the ancient humane commandment that thou art thy brother’s keeper.

We are grateful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting us to receive this highly prestigious Award in recognition of our humble humanitarian services. 

The human being is the finest creature of the Almighty. Unfortunately, by certain deeds, he has fallen to the lowest state. However he deserves our sympathy and attention. Serving humankind in distress is worship of God. 

We bow our heads in humility to Allah for guiding us in rendering this service to people. We began as individuals, and by God’s grace our work now is an institution. Today’s Award, I believe, is not for us as persons. It is for the services we have rendered. We will consider it as a debt, always reminding us to pay it back by more devotion to humanity. You may be interested if I briefly describe the scope of activities, steadily expanded, by our trust. 

My wife, BILQIS, runs the Center for Shelterless, including abandoned and innocent newly born babies. Some 1,039 such children have been taken care of so far by the center. Childless parents can adopt these children. Through this center, unique parent-children relationships are established on a purely humanitarian basis. 

Old, sick, crippled and shelterless persons find abode in the Edhi Home in Karachi. It currently accommodates some 1,700 such individuals. Our objective is to spread a network of homes for the shelterless in other cities of Pakistan, e.g. Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar. 

For poor and sick persons our institution provides free, emergency ambulance services. Eighty ambulances are in operation, covering all of Pakistan. At a distance of every 100 miles an Ambulance Center has been organized. At these centers a fully equipped medical team is stationed to provide temporary treatment. The Edhi Foundation has been set up to carry out the work in an orderly way and without interruption. We intend to open similar centers in other big cities in Asia: Bombay, India; Dacca, Bangladesh; Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

Three round-the-clock dispensaries and maternity homes function under the management of the Edhi Trust. Here first-aid services are provided for accident cases. Some 150,000 individuals receive these services monthly, without any obligation on their part. 

My wife looks after a free maternity home of 100 beds in the suburbs of Karachi. Over 300 delivery cases, on an average, are attended to every month. Mrs. EDHI also manages a nursing department for less educated and poor widows so that they can earn an honorable livelihood rather than extend their hands for help. These poor women are trained here for six months. During this period a stipend equivalent to US$25 is paid them per month. The women are specially trained to clean dead bodies before burial as per Islamic law. Hundreds of such women have been trained and are now earning their livelihood with respect and honor. 

Our scope of activities include picking up dead bodies wherever found and regardless of the cause of death. If no heir or relative of the deceased is found, burial is done by the trust. When it is a police case, prompt assistance of authorities is sought and burial is arranged. 

Genuinely jobless persons willing to work and earn their livelihood are provided temporary assistance equivalent to US$20 per month for food and other needs. Crippled and elderly patients are given wheelchairs, beds, crutches, bed-urine pans and urine chairs for use in their homes, at a reasonable charge when they can afford to pay, but free in genuinely destitute cases. 

It is gratifying to inform you that, with Allah’s blessings, construction of a house for shelterless girls on a plot of about six hectares is in full swing and is expected to be completed within the next two years. When finished, this house will accommodate hundreds of destitute girls. There they will be given training in driving, first-aid, maternity and child care, washing of dead bodies, and attending crippled and mentally retarded persons. 

We are obliged to the people of Pakistan who generously donate funds equivalent to over US$2 million annually, funds which provide the resources for carrying out our activities. I am happy to declare that the money from this Award will be used to establish another foundation in Pakistan. May Allah bless you and us and guide us to give our utmost to the best of all his creatures — human beings.

The INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION, or IIRR as it is known to its intimates, is unique among government and non-government agencies attempting to promote development in the Third World. The concepts shaping its efforts had their genesis nearly 70 years ago in France during World War I, where Dr. Y.C. James Yen and associates were teaching illiterate Chinese laborers — sent by the Chinese government to help in the war — to read and write. From this beginning grew the Mass Education Movement (MEM) that was remaking rural life on the north China plain until its leadership was driven out by the Japanese military in 1937. After World War II the United States Congress lent new impetus to the movement, funding the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction that, using adaptations of MEM concepts, led eventually to the transformation of rural Taiwan. 

IIRR, incorporated in the U.S. in 1960 as an international rather than strictly Chinese movement, conducted a worldwide search for a physical site. In 1961 it selected a 52 hectare site in Silang, Cavite, Philippines, for its training and research headquarters. Recruitment of the individuals who were to build the INSTITUTE began then, and included Dr.Juan M. Flavier, who became president in 1978 and manages a staff now numbering 160. From the outset IIRR did not attempt to direct development. Rather it sought to serve the Rural Reconstruction Movement (RRM) already in existence in the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala, and later developed in Thailand, Ghana and India. Workers from these lands have been trained at Silang to return home better equipped to help their neighbors. 

IIRR has suffered many setbacks but has achieved much. Soon after the INSTITUTE began its work its approach of small scale, one-on-one rural development went out of fashion; massive schemes to reshape the landscape and rural life commanded both national and international financial support. This change in priorities left the INSTITUTE in the shadows, with many of its hard-earned lessons ignored. 

Nevertheless IIRR clung to its precepts: going to the peasants, living among them, planning and working with them, starting with what they knew and had, learning from them and learning by doing. In time this approach proved its worth as decision makers, often reluctantly, recognized that the means as well as the benefactor of development must be the individual. 

International training began in Silang in 1965 and in 1971 participants — social workers, planners, donors and missionaries — came from 11 countries and 18 government and non-government agencies to the first training course to be given to non-RRM personnel. Lectures and discussions were matched by field practice in the villages — from building water-sealed toilets to helping farmers with upland rice variety test plots, vegetable and herb gardens and cooperatives. 

By 1978 training had become a major aspect of the INSTITUTE. World Vision, Christian Children?s Fund, UNICEF, UN Development Fund, FAO, the Peace Corps and USAID sponsored trainees, as did Save the Children Fund, World Concern, Redd Barna and Foster Parents Plan. Alumni of the full-curriculum courses now total 800. 

For the benefit of rural foreign workers who find travel to the Philippines costly, IIRR has instituted training courses abroad. In Kenya three training courses have been given jointly with Voluntary Agencies Development Assistance for 81 participants. In Indonesia similar joint training courses have been presented. 

The exchange among rural workers from around the world is generating within IIRR new understanding of the stubborn problems that hobble progress, and some options for overcoming them. The INSTITUTE has yet to become a repository of farming expertise, however, and matching social concern with hardheaded and productive profit on the land remains a near-universal conundrum for development agencies. But by training workers and farmers to organize around their common concerns and thus build a more attractive future in the world?s villages, IIRR, with its accumulated insight, has become an international asset. 

In electing the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes its training of agrarian development workers from four continents, enabling them to share experience and ideas for more effective progress.

In the name, and on behalf, of all my fellow-workers at the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION — and as representative of the countless and nameless rural workers laboring in far-flung villages — I accept this great honor. 

In keeping with the institutional nature of the Award, I have with me tonight representatives from every level of our organization. 

To begin with, it is not every day that an agency can present its founding father of 63 years ago, himself a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, Dr. Y.C. James Yen. 

By a stroke of happy coincidence we have visiting with us from the United States, a member of the IIRR board and president of Schott and Associates, consultants in international development, John Schott. We have also two of our vice presidents — Vice President for United States Operations Robert O’ Brien, and Vice President for Philippine Operations Antonio de Jesus. Representing the IIRR Senior Staff are Conrado Navarro, Director of Field Operations and Assistant to the President, and Terri Bumanglag, Director of our International Training Division. 

Representing IIRR’s six affiliated national rural reconstruction movements — in Asia (India, Philippines, Thailand), in Latin America (Colombia, Guatemala), in Africa (Ghana) — is Saran Kumar of the lndian Rural Reconstruction Movement. 

Representing the middle level staff of the INSTITUTE are Lorna Labayen of the Cavite social laboratory, Lito Pastores of the Bicol social laboratory, and Ed Macapal of our Negros operations. Representing the rural reconstruction workers and community facilitators are Bartolome Facun and Lerma Dino. Representing the support services are Rosie Legaspi of the Manila office, Empeon Mallari of the canteen services, and Lily Espineli of the clerical pool. 

Representing the barrio farmers are Aling Oyang Tercero of Barrio Tibig, Mang Gorio Reyes of Barrio Pasong Kawayan II, and Juanito Llorente of Barrio Buenavista. 

Last but not least, representing IIRR wives and families is my wife, Susan Flavier. 

May I request all those from IIRR to stand and remain standing to receive the recognition and thanks of all of us. In turn we of the INSTITUTE pledge to keep faith with the greatness of spirit, integrity, and devotion to duty of our late, beloved president, Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay.

When South Korea’s effective modernization began a quarter of a century ago, it was geared to a manufacturing for export drive that stunned the trading world with efficient production of low cost goods. Disciplined laborers working harder, often for less, than anyone else in East Asia, were a key to this success. Unlike in Japan and Taiwan, where after World War II rural progress came first, in Korea villages felt the sweeping winds of change only a decade later. Hence seekers for employment and opportunity flocked to the cities, making Seoul one of Asia’s dozen largest cities and inevitably creating massive slums where social services lagged behind the need.

Life in a slum, though devoid of most amenities, still allows a sense of family warmth and home. Networks of relatives and co-workers cushion harsh outer realities. Now even this make-do haven is threatened by booming urban land values and both public and private redevelopment schemes that mean misery to evicted slum dwellers.

Thirteen years ago, Jesuit JOHN VINCENT DALY, a Sogang University philosophy professor, decided to learn how the poor viewed life by moving into Cheong Kyei Cheon, a Seoul slum. There he met PAUL JEONG-GU JEI, recently expelled from Seoul National University for leading demonstrations. Their first partnership in community concern lasted less than a year. JEI, after readmission to the university, was soon jailed for 11 months for antigovernment activities. Not long after he was released he and DALY decided to open a community center in two rented rooms in Yahng Pyeong Dong slum. Convinced that outside problem solvers tend to impose their perceptions, the two sought to be catalysts fostering community-determined change.

Three years later Yahng Pyeong Dong was classified for redevelopment. Little compensation or concern for their rehousing was vouchsafed the residents. Fifteen families approached DALY and JEI for help.

With US$100,000 from MISEREOR, the German Catholic Social Aid Fund, and other monies from abroad, the two were able to purchase a small plot of land 12 kilometers southeast of Seoul only days before the eviction was to be carried out. DALY, JEI, and the committee of slumdwellers which they had helped create, expected fewer but finally accepted 170 families. In May 1977 all but 20 of the families moved into tents on the new site and joined in building the village of Bogum Jahri, the Place of Happiness. With three skilled members as construction supervisors, and enthused by interdenominational prayer, the newcomers completed construction of the buildings by November 1977, and the sewage system for the 170 houses was finished by the onset of winter cold in December.

From such beginnings emerged a practical system for building housing at the equivalent of US$166 per pysong, or 3.3 square meters, largely with self-made construction materials which are one-third the cost of commercial materials. The second village was Han Dok and the third MokWha. A community center was constructed within walking distance of all three.

DALY, who was born in Philo, Illinois 51 years ago, has made South Korea his home for 26 years. Both he and his partner,JEI, who was born in 1944 in South Kyong-sang province, have become participants in the daily struggles of the homeless poor. They have established the Korean Catholic Research Institute of the Urban Poor to aid slum dwellers in learning their legal rights and correcting injustices such as unwarranted or unrecompensed evictions. The two are also attempting to prove that a rich cultural heritage can be retained and enhanced by the most disadvantaged, provided there is effective community organization and local leadership.

In electing Father JOHN VINCENT DALY and PAUL JEONG-GU JEI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their education and guidance of the urban poor to create vigorous, humanly sound satellite communities.

After learning that I was recipient of the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award I was, for a few days, in a state of confusion. I thought to myself, I have already received my reward; how is it the Lord is giving me another? The reward I had already received was the ability to live as a poor man, not out of some kind of moral imperative or Christian sense of drag, but happy and content as a human being with other poor people; and I was also given the power to confront and challenge no matter what kind of suffering or persecution should follow—the powers of injustice which dehumanize the poor. 

Since I considered these things my reward, I couldn’t see how or why the Lord would be giving me some other award. And I even began to worry a bit, wondering, what has been wrong in my life that He is giving me this very big and very prestigious Award. 

But two days later I went to visit an area where people have been struggling and fighting against inhuman eviction, and as soon as I saw their ecstatic welcome and joy, at that moment I began to realize the meaning of this Award. 

That is, before I saw this as an honor to me personally; now I saw it as a recognition of all poor people who long to be really human and who fight against violence and injustice. The absence of justice and the presence of structural and organized violence in the world is whet makes and keeps people poor, but even in their poverty, they do not forget, but rather cling to the value of the truly human. 

And so, this Award is being given to me, not for some insignificant work or achievement, rather it is given because of a way of living. 

Thus, I came to realize that this Award is not so much an award, but rather a ray of light to the countless numbers of anonymous companions who commit themselves to a similar way of living—accepting with joy and gratitude all kinds of pain and difficulties, being isolated and lonely, and receiving no recognition or acceptance from the world. 

I am especially happy and grateful to receive this Award in 1986, the year in which the remarkable spirit and burning zeal of the late President Ramon Magsaysay blossomed, bore fruit, and empowered the Philippine people to attain democracy. Not “three cheers,” but ten thousand cheers for the Philippine people, and ten thousand “hoorays” for the fullness of humanity and for a more just and righteous world.