Hidden amid the dazzling human mosaic of India are millions of tribal people. For centuries, they have lived apart in remote highlands and forests. The Madia Gonds, for example, occupy 150 square kilometers of dense forest in eastern Maharashtra, bordering Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh states. In a thousand isolated villages, they survive by hunting and gathering and shifting cultivation. When PRAKASH AMTE and MANDAKINI AMTE arrived in their midst thirty-four years ago, the region had no modern services. Government officials considered it wild and served there only reluctantly. By contrast, the AMTES, both of them medical doctors, came by choice. 

PRAKASH AMTE grew up in Anandwan, an ashram and rehabilitation center for leprosy patients in Maharashtra founded by his father, the renowned Gandhian humanitarian Murlidhar Devidas Amte, or Baba Amte. PRAKASH was busy with postgraduate surgical studies in Nagpur when, in 1974, he volunteered to take over a new project begun by Baba Amte among the Madia Gonds. He and his wife MANDAKINI abandoned their urban practices and, in a leap of faith, moved to remote Hemalkasa. 

The young couple settled in a doorless hut without a telephone or electricity or privacy. They practiced medicine beside the road and warmed themselves by a wood fire at night. The Madia Gonds, shy people and suspicious of outsiders, spurned their help at first. Prakash and Mandakini learned their language and patiently gained their trust. The miraculous cures of an epileptic boy with terrible burns and a man near death from cerebral malaria turned the tide. “Once a patient is cured,” says PRAKASH, “he comes back and brings four new patients.” 

Beginning in 1975, Swissaid provided funds to build and equip a small hospital in Hemalkasa. There PRAKASH and MANDAKINI performed surgery and treated malaria, tuberculosis, and dysentery, burns and animal bites. To conform to tribal sensibilities, they placed most of the hospital’s facilities out of doors, beneath the trees. They charged nothing. 

Illiteracy had made the Madia Gonds easy prey for corrupt forest officers and other greedy outsiders. The Amtes helped them assert their rights and intervened to mediate disputes and rid the area of abusive officials. In 1976, they opened a school. The Madia Gonds were reluctant to send their children but, in time, the school prospered and became a center for both academic and vocational education. PRAKASH and MANDAKINI’s own children were educated there. 

The AMTES have used the school at Hemalkasa to introduce the Madia Gonds to settled agriculture-growing vegetables, fruits, and irrigated grains organically-and to encourage them to conserve forest resources. This includes wild animals, a tribal dietary staple. The AMTES’ popular animal orphanage at Hemalkasa promotes the survival of animals as part of nature’s balance. 

Simplicity and respect guide the AMTES’ work with the Madia Gonds. PRAKASH wears only a singlet and white shorts as he goes about his work, so as not to identify himself with “well-dressed” outsiders. Where applicable, the couple incorporates tribal cures in their medical practice. In school, children perform tribal songs and dances. 

Today, the AMTES’ hospital has fifty beds, a staff of four doctors, and treats forty thousand patients a year free of charge. It is a regional center for mother-child welfare and health education. Its “barefoot doctors” bring first aid to outlying villages. The AMTES’ school, meanwhile, has grown to six hundred students and is comprehensive. Among its graduates are the Madia Gonds’ first doctors and lawyers and teachers as well as officials, office workers, and police. 

“More than 90 percent of the students have come back to serve in the community, including my sons,” says PRAKASH, reflecting on his and MANDAKINI’s legacy. “Maybe it’s the way we have led our lives.” 

In electing PRAKASH AMTE and MANDAKINI AMTE to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today’s India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, my dear brothers and sisters. 

I feel honored to be here to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the highest of its kind in Asia. I come here as the representative of those amongst whom we chose to live and work. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Foundation for their recognition of our humble efforts to help Central India’s tribals live a life of dignity and self-reliance. We accept this award on behalf of all the volunteers of Lok Biradari Prakalp, without whose devotion and dedication to this cause we would not have been able to materialise the dream of my father-in-law, the late Baba Amte. 

When we set out to step into the interiors of Bhamragad’s dense forest, besides having studied medicine, our only opening balance was the inner urge to help the derelict of this region by educating them and running a healthcare centre for them. For a woman like me who hails from a middle class family and perfectly urbanised, it was a real challenge to come to roost in the jungle, where all the wild creatures had their claim first and next to them were the hostile natives. We looked like aliens to them who were half-clad and who lived on the natural forest produce. Far too distressing was their distrust and our inability to communicate with them. Moreover, they were uncivilized, uncared for and victims of extremes of weather, snake and bear-bites, cerebral malaria and many other disorders. 

We realised that the way to their hearts lay through the language. We picked up their tongue and communication became easier. We set up the dispensary, but to persuade them to go for modern medicine was not easy. . . In the course of time we won them over. They throng the hospital now. They come walking, sometimes fifty kilometers, at any hour of the day. There were other things to do too, to build up confidence. As there was scarcity of basic necessities, we used to buy various articles from nearby cities and provide these to them on a no-loss, no-profit basis. 

We guessed that without education it was impossible to put them on their own. Soon a residential school was set up to impart formal education to the young and create awareness about their rights. Over a period of time, a number of the tribal children have become doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. Many donors came forward with their generous help which enabled us to serve the tribe better. We are grateful to all these benefactors. 

Though it is our pleasure and pride to see the tribal youth being aware of their capacities and rights today, to see them standing up for their brethren, we are far from being complacent and certainly wish to open many more doors for them in future. I must say this Award will help reinvigorate our faith in our work. We accept it with abiding faith in the essential goodness of the people on the other side. Thank you once again.

Hidden amid the dazzling human mosaic of India are millions of tribal people. For centuries, they have lived apart in remote highlands and forests. The Madia Gonds, for example, occupy 150 square kilometers of dense forest in eastern Maharashtra, bordering Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh states. In a thousand isolated villages, they survive by hunting and gathering and shifting cultivation. When PRAKASH AMTE and MANDAKINI AMTE arrived in their midst thirty-four years ago, the region had no modern services. Government officials considered it wild and served there only reluctantly. By contrast, the AMTES, both of them medical doctors, came by choice.

PRAKASH AMTE grew up in Anandwan, an ashram and rehabilitation center for leprosy patients in Maharashtra founded by his father, the renowned Gandhian humanitarian Murlidhar Devidas Amte, or Baba Amte. PRAKASH was busy with postgraduate surgical studies in Nagpur when, in 1974, he volunteered to take over a new project begun by Baba Amte among the Madia Gonds. He and his wife MANDAKINI abandoned their urban practices and, in a leap of faith, moved to remote Hemalkasa.

The young couple settled in a doorless hut without a telephone or electricity or privacy. They practiced medicine beside the road and warmed themselves by a wood fire at night. The Madia Gonds, shy people and suspicious of outsiders, spurned their help at first. Prakash and Mandakini learned their language and patiently gained their trust. The miraculous cures of an epileptic boy with terrible burns and a man near death from cerebral malaria turned the tide. “Once a patient is cured,” says PRAKASH, “he comes back and brings four new patients.”

Beginning in 1975, Swissaid provided funds to build and equip a small hospital in Hemalkasa. There PRAKASH and MANDAKINI performed surgery and treated malaria, tuberculosis, and dysentery, burns and animal bites. To conform to tribal sensibilities, they placed most of the hospital’s facilities out of doors, beneath the trees. They charged nothing.

Illiteracy had made the Madia Gonds easy prey for corrupt forest officers and other greedy outsiders. The Amtes helped them assert their rights and intervened to mediate disputes and rid the area of abusive officials. In 1976, they opened a school. The Madia Gonds were reluctant to send their children but, in time, the school prospered and became a center for both academic and vocational education. PRAKASH and MANDAKINI’s own children were educated there.

The AMTES have used the school at Hemalkasa to introduce the Madia Gonds to settled agriculture-growing vegetables, fruits, and irrigated grains organically-and to encourage them to conserve forest resources. This includes wild animals, a tribal dietary staple. The AMTES’ popular animal orphanage at Hemalkasa promotes the survival of animals as part of nature’s balance.

Simplicity and respect guide the AMTES’ work with the Madia Gonds. PRAKASH wears only a singlet and white shorts as he goes about his work, so as not to identify himself with “well-dressed” outsiders. Where applicable, the couple incorporates tribal cures in their medical practice. In school, children perform tribal songs and dances.

Today, the AMTES’ hospital has fifty beds, a staff of four doctors, and treats forty thousand patients a year free of charge. It is a regional center for mother-child welfare and health education. Its “barefoot doctors” bring first aid to outlying villages. The AMTES’ school, meanwhile, has grown to six hundred students and is comprehensive. Among its graduates are the Madia Gonds’ first doctors and lawyers and teachers as well as officials, office workers, and police.

“More than 90 percent of the students have come back to serve in the community, including my sons,” says PRAKASH, reflecting on his and MANDAKINI’s legacy. “Maybe it’s the way we have led our lives.”

In electing PRAKASH AMTE and MANDAKINI AMTE to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today’s India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions.

I am indeed overwhelmed to stand here to receive this prestigious award in the name of Ramon Magsaysay, a visionary and an outstanding leader, yet a man of the people, who believed that every living being has the right to live in liberty and happiness. It is a great privilege to receive this award at a moment when identity, whether of an individual or of a community, seems to have been threatened by globalisation, unequal distribution of wealth and natural resources no less than by growing consumerism of the haves and destitution and deprivation of the have-nots.

Lok Biradari Prakalp is a sincere effort to bridge the gap between these two worlds, that of the beneficiaries of modern science and technology and of those who live on the fringes without basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. For the Madia Gond, the tribal community living in the wilderness of Bhamragad’s dense forests, there was no world beyond the forest.

It was in the early seventies when my father, the late Baba Amte, took us to this virgin forest for a picnic. We were unaware that in his frolic was hidden a dream of extending a hand of help to those who were plagued by starvation, disease, superstition and death. Cultivation of land was forbidden here, and there was very little to eat, fit for a civilized man. Death sought them in many forms. They were helpless before the wild animals. They famished and died much before their time. Education was an otherworldly thing for them, since there was no contact with the civilized world beyond the forest. They lived in conditions no better than that of the savage man. The beauty of the surroundings was at once bewitching and bewildering, and the realities ugly enough to fracture the conscience. Here lay the challenge and I decided to accept it. Baba’s vision became my venture. My tryst with the tribal was signed during this trip. That was a turning point in my life.

Giving up my post-graduation in surgery halfway I set out to give my best to the Madia Gonds. Accompanied by my wife Dr. Mandakini, I committed myself to work not for them but to fulfil my inner urge. Like a perfect consort, she stood by my side through thick and thin.

Thirty-four years have elapsed since the inception of this project. It has grown in many directions. It can be described as a journey from darkness to light (we lived without electricity for twenty years). We have been able to provide not only medical aid but education, and agriculture while inculcating a scientific attitude in them. This called for many hands which voluntarily joined us. Leaving behind their lucrative careers and urban comforts our colleagues rooted themselves here and chose to live in the most adverse conditions and toiled hard to make Lok Biradari what it is today. I think passion and compassion are the two important things required in any social venture. If you allow yourself to be led by them, you will reap a rich harvest. I honestly feel that a true leader is one who teaches the followers to lead themselves.

I accept this award with humility on behalf of all our fellow workers. We also declare that the Award money will be utilized for projects of the institution. Thank you.

Behind Japan’s famous facade of social harmony and homogeneity lie complicated realities. Often hidden from view are troubling elements of the country’s social life involving stigmatized communities such as the burakumin and minority ethnic groups like the Ainu or the many Koreans, Filipinos, and other foreigners living in Japan today. Also hidden, and often denied, are troubling accounts of Japan’s past role as an imperial power. Discrimination, exploitation, predatory colonialism, war crimes: these subjects are taboo, especially in print. AKIO ISHII thinks it should be otherwise. As head of Akashi Shoten, a publishing house, he is exposing the underside of Japan’s smooth social surface and bringing difficult subjects to light.

In premodern times, the buraku were social outcastes and reviled as dirty. Despite official emancipation over a century ago, this stigma lingered. Ishii himself experienced it as a boy. He was five years old when the end of World War II ushered in Japan’s postimperial era. As a politicized youth in the 1960s, he agitated against injustices in Japanese society and also opposed the renewal of Japan’s security ties with the United States. In the 1970s, he joined a study group dedicated to eliminating discrimination against the buraku and became editor of its magazine. This led to Akashi Shoten in 1978, a publishing company of his own. ISHII determined to build his company as “a bastion for the movement to eliminate discrimination in thought and culture.”

At first, ISHII concentrated on the buraku issue itself and on other beleaguered Japanese minorities. But he soon expanded to other human rights issues. Koreans had been colonized by Japan and compelled into forced labor during World War II. Ishii published accounts of this brutal episode and also of the plight of Koreans living in Japan, where they were discriminated against in housing, employment, and marriage. Similar forms of discrimination faced a new wave of foreign workers who flocked to Japan in the 1990s. Ishii exposed their dilemma to readers in a stream of new books. He published a Human Rights Handbook for Foreigners in Japan in Urdu, Vietnamese, Persian, and fifteen other languages, to guide migrants through Japan’s vexing laws and procedures and to steer them to services and support groups. In a similar spirit, Ishii published a book in Japanese on the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which Japan declined to ratify.

Over time, ISHII’s books drew attention to the “comfort women” of World War II; to Filipino women trapped in Japan’s exploitative entertainment industry; to the physically and mentally disabled, abused children, and victims of domestic violence-to everyone, in fact, who was invisible behind Japan’s curtain of respectable normality. Ishii also published books that countered right-wing efforts to exaggerate the beneficial influence of Japanese colonialism, to cover up Japan’s war crimes, and to depict its former military leaders as heroes.

In recent years, many of Akashi Shoten‘s books have introduced Japanese readers to human rights issues outside Japan, including the caste system in India and the struggles of other oppressed groups around the world. In the twenty-first century, says ISHII, “We must create an era where the human rights of individuals are truly respected.”

Ishii is not a public figure but his influence is large. Some 2,800 Akashi Shoten books are in print. They sell well among intellectuals, scholars, university students, and civil society activists. Ishii is content. What is important for a publisher, he says, is “how often he can publish books of universal and permanent impact. These books,” he says, “are my real assets.”

In electing AKIO ISHII to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes his principled career as a publisher, placing discrimination, human rights, and other difficult subjects squarely in Japan’s public discourse.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends.

It is a great honor for me to have been selected as recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award this year. I really wonder if one like me deserves such a prestigious award. I would like to express my gratitude to the Foundation’s Trustees.

2008 is a commemorative year for my publishing company, Akashi Shoten, for it is the 30th anniversary since its founding. Since then, we have published over 3,000 books on human rights and other social issues. I understand the Foundation is presenting me this award in recognition of the importance of the books we have published. For this I am truly honored and express my heartfelt thanks.

I was born in 1940, one year before Japan surged ahead into the Pacific War. I was just five years old in 1945 when Japan surrendered, and my childhood overlaps with the years when Japan was rebuilding itself as a war-torn country. Catching a glimpse of the horrors of war, I remember wondering where in the world Japan was headed. Because of these childhood experiences, one of my main themes in life has been to rid ourselves of war and to build a society filled with happiness.

Another life theme based on my childhood experiences is that of overcoming prejudices found in Japanese society, prejudice directed towards the burakumin, one of Japan’s cultural minorities, which has continued for over the last 400 years, and prejudice towards Korean residents rooted in Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. I have again and again asked myself, why does such prejudice persist?

In 1960 when the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was signed, I was a college student. All over Japan citizens and students took to the streets against the strengthening of Japan-U.S. military ties. I actively participated in this anti-war student movement and the social movement to eliminate discrimination. Based on my involvement in the peace, labor and the buraku liberation movements, I founded Akashi Shoten in 1978 as a publisher of books on human rights in Japan and the world over. Our first publications focused on the buraku liberation movement. Then our books moved to a wider range of human rights issues including discrimination within Japan, and then on to social problems found in other parts of Asia.

From about fifteen years ago, as if guided by our authors and publications, I began to travel extensively throughout Asia to get a firsthand look at poverty and the real situation of “development” happening all over Asia. I visited people living in garbage dump slums and those suffering under a severe caste system. Through our books we have been able to expose the suffering of many people; at the same time, these books introduce the strength of so many who have overcome great hardships with courage and enthusiasm. We have been careful not only to publish books which focus on suffering and poverty, but also to introduce the rich and diverse societies and cultures found throughout Asia. Through the publishing business, it is our great hope that we can help our Japanese readership to overcome its belittling of our Asian neighbors.

As a foster parent for an abused child, I have also researched and published books dealing with child abuse and child welfare. Something I learned through my recent publications concerning children is that they cannot choose their parents. My personal experiences, my involvement in social movements and the things I have learned through publishing books have all brought me to this realization. For this reason, we now provide assistance to a shelter in Japan for abused children. This is one of our company’s contributions to society. We have also recently published books on the present state of child prostitution in Asia in the hope that by making people aware of this reality we can help bring about change. Through the medium of print I hope I can continue to contribute towards creating societies and a world free of discrimination and war. This award is encouragement for me and my colleagues to continue in our efforts to publish good books.

Modern orthopedic science, combined with space-age technology, has transformed the field of prosthetics. But in much of Asia-and even more so in provincial areas such as northern Thailand-modern prosthetic limbs are well beyond the reach of ordinary people who need them. They are too expensive. They are too time-consuming to acquire and maintain. Or they are poorly designed for life in the hills and on the farm. This is why poor people who lose legs from accidents or land mines or diabetes (or from snake bites, for that matter) often resort to makeshift alternatives. They fashion substitute limbs from bamboo shafts and spare bicycle parts and from wood and leather and plastic pipes, or they walk on homemade crutches. Observing this some forty years ago, THERDCHAI JIVACATE JIVACATE, a young orthopedist practicing in Chiang Mai, decided he could help them.

Therdchai, a graduate of Chulalongkorn Hospital Medical School who also studied rehabilitation medicine at Northwestern University, began to experiment with cheap and sturdy alternatives to the prosthetic limbs available at his hospital, all of them made from costly imported materials. An early breakthrough involved recycling plastic yogurt bottles to fabricate artificial legs. Using his own money and time taken from his private practice, Therdchai tinkered constantly to simplify the fabrication process and to adapt his devices to local circumstances, creating a “farmer’s foot” for working in wet, slippery fields, and another foot for wearing flip-flops. To poor patients, he provided these devices free.

In time, Thailand’s late Princess Mother Sri Nagarindra came to know of THERDCHAI’s generous project. In 1992, she lent her patronage to create the Prostheses Foundation in Chiang Mai under his direction. With support from the royal family, private donors, and the Thai national lottery fund, THERDCHAI was able to expand his work.

Amputees from Thailand’s remote borderlands were among the least likely to have access to proper prosthetic limbs. To change this, THERDCHAI initiated field clinics in which teams of doctors, technicians, staff members, and volunteers bring prosthetic workshops directly to the people. Once on the site, he and his team assess the awaiting amputees; make casts of their stumps; mold plastic limbs for each one and then test them for proper alignment, comfort, and “gait.” On the sixth day, a custom-made limb is presented to each amputee-anywhere from 150 to 300 persons. To date, Therdchai has organized one hundred of these mobile workshops, including several in neighboring Malaysia, Laos, and Myanmar.

In certain high-need areas bordering Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, Therdchai also set up permanent satellite workshops capable of making artificial limbs on the spot. The foundation equips these workshops and also trains the technicians, who are often amputees themselves. In ancillary activities, the foundation has organized artificial-leg workshops in Aceh, Indonesia, and trained prosthesis technicians from several neighboring countries. Meanwhile, THERDCHAI himself established Thailand’s first and only school of occupational therapy at Chiang Mai University.

Through it all, THERDCHAI has remained an inventor, assiduously refining his designs and fabrication techniques in cooperation with engineers at the King Mongkut Institute of Technology and other collaborators. His devices cost about 60-80 percent less than the imported alternatives and are durable. Through the Prostheses Foundation, more than fifteen thousand people have received them free of charge.

Although officially retired, THERDCHAI at sixty-eight shows few signs of slowing down. He knows that well-made prosthetic limbs not only restore amputees to productive lives; they also restore their self esteem. His work brings great satisfaction. “Seeing my patients’ smiles . . . when they are able to walk on both legs,” he says, “I just feel happy.”

In electing THERDCHAI JIVACATE to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes his dedicated efforts in Thailand to provide inexpensive, practical, and comfortable artificial limbs to even the poorest amputees.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Distinguished guests, Fellow Awardees and dear friends.

First of all, I would like to thank the Foundation for selecting me for such an honourable award. I have often heard about this famous award and its distinguished awardees, ever since I was young.

I could hardly believe my ears when I was informed by Magsaysay Foundation President, Ms. Carn Abella, that I had been selected to receive one of this year’s awards. At that auspicious time, I was busy fitting an artificial leg for a baby elephant in Lampang province. It was truly great and pleasurable news for me.

As an orthopedic surgeon for over the past forty years, I needed to cut off the legs of many patients. But when I was a young orthopedic surgeon, it was very difficult for the amputees to obtain artificial legs in Thailand, because access to the technology of making and fitting artificial legs was confined only to Bangkok. In addition, they were very expensive. Amputees had to use bamboo or wood or whatever materials they could find to make into artificial legs. This inspired me to further my studies in prosthetics and orthotics during my residency training in the United States.

Because prostheses and orthoses, in those days, were only made from imported parts, they were very expensive and could not be made for the poor. I began trying every means to make the parts of an artificial leg from local materials. This reduced the cost of an artificial leg by half and more amputees could receive an artificial leg.

In 1992 my colleague Mr. Boonyu and I were able to make artificial legs from used, hence wasted, yogurt bottles which made the cost of the materials for a leg ten times cheaper than those made from imported parts in a government hospital. When this became known to His Majesty the King’s Mother, she established the Prostheses Foundation to support me in making artificial legs for poor and underprivileged amputees, to be distributed free of charge.

Because underprivileged amputees almost always live in remote areas, we set up a mobile unit which could travel to reach them. From 1992 up to the present, I have led 101 mobile unit trips to the rural and remote areas, and about 21,710 artificial legs have been provided to 15,981 amputees.

I owe a great deal to His Majesty the King’s Mother and to her daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Galayani Watana, who gave me a chance to do the work as Secretary General of the Prostheses Foundation.

Once again I would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this prestigious recognition of our work. This Award will certainly give me greater moral support to continue my work for the sake of the amputees, not only those in Thailand, but in the region. I also wish to take this opportunity to thank all my colleagues and my family who have enabled me to continue to fulfill my mission.

Korb kun krub.

In Islam, authority rests in knowledge. In times of crisis and for guidance in day-to-day life, Muslims turn to scholars. It is their role to apply the truth of the Holy Qur’an and the lessons of the Prophet Muhammad to human life in matters large and small. Yet, Islam’s religious scholars-who these days may be teachers or preachers or public intellectuals, and are often all three-do not always see eye-to-eye. Their debates over the centuries have produced the heterogeneous world of Islam today, with its various sects and schools of law. In such debates, the authority of individual thinkers weighs heavily. And in countries like Indonesia, with vast Muslim majorities, intellectuals such as AHMAD SYAFII MAARIF can influence millions and shape the character of national life.

SYAFII MAARIF was born in West Sumatra in 1935. Through his family and early schooling, he was exposed to the teachings of reform Islam as espoused by Muhammadiyah, one of two mass organizations that dominate Muslim life in Indonesia. After university, he shifted naturally into teaching and later earned his doctorate in Islamic thought at the University of Chicago under the eminent scholar of Islam, Fazlur Rahman. By the 1980s, he was an intellectual of serious reputation and a rising leader in Muhammadiyah.

The Indonesian nationalists who declared their country independent in 1945 created a secular state. They chose not to enshrine the Shari’a, Islamic law, as the law of the land for Muslims. Instead, befitting Indonesia’s extraordinary diversity, the new nation’s creed became Panca Sila, whose ecumenical five principles began with “belief in one God” and otherwise spoke to the ideals of a just and civilized humanity, national unity, democracy, and social justice. This decision became a matter of bitter dispute among Indonesian Muslims that lingered under the thirty-year-long dictatorship of Suharto. His downfall in 1998 brought a new era of openness, reform, and democratizaton to Indonesia but also tumultuous sectarian conflict. It was at exactly this time that SYAFII MAARIF assumed leadership of Muhammadiyah and its thirty million members and sympathizers.

SYAFII MAARIF embraced his country’s fresh hopes for democracy and good governance and, in the stormy seas ahead, became a force for calm and moderation. When violence erupted between Indonesian Muslims and Christians, he reminded Muslims that Islam teaches the equality of all people; he took the lead in interfaith dialogues and warned against provocateurs who fanned fear and hate. When activists revived the call for an Islamic state and pressed urgently for implementation of the Shari’a, he opposed them; the nonsectarian principles of Panca Sila, he said, were the right ones for Indonesia’s plural society. And when the impact of 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq reached Indonesia, and when terrorism struck home in Bali and Jakarta, he stressed that “Terrorism is not the authentic face of Islam.” In concert with other moderate leaders, he denounced it as a “crime against humanity.” He said much the same about the new American wars but urged Indonesian Muslims to reject spurious calls to Holy War and to make their protests peacefully. He did so himself.

As Muhammadiyah‘s president, SYAFII MAARIF spurned the trappings of power and resisted the call to politics. Today, at seventy-three and retired, he relishes his role as an independent thinker and mentor to the young. We must learn to look beyond our individual nations, he says, and see the world from a global perspective — “from a human perspective and from a justice perspective.” Indeed, justice is the key to “global wisdom.” Without it, he says, “I think the world will go astray forever.”

In electing AHMAD SYAFII MAARIF to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his guiding Muslims to embrace tolerance and pluralism as the basis for justice and harmony in Indonesia and in the world at large.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman, President and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Distinguished Guests, Fellow Awardees, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I cannot find the right words to express my humble and sincere gratitude to the President and Trustees of the Foundation for having selected me as winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding. What I have actually done so far, particularly through my religio-cultural activities for years in my country, is insignificant compared to this great honor bestowed on me.

The Award itself outweighs my contribution to promoting peace, awakening the ideas of democracy, pluralism, and the spirit of interfaith dialogue that, from time to time, are lively and promising in Indonesia. By opening the window of democracy in 1998, the new forces of the nation, under a reform movement, immediately took the opportunity to recover and revive the democratic tradition bequeathed by our political philosophy enshrined in Panca Sila. Before that, during the era of long-term dictatorship, democracy in practice was non-existent, though in theory, for the regime’s political rhetoric, it was still oft mentioned.

The political transformation to resolidify democracy was certainly not easy. During this dramatic transitional period, Indonesia seriously lacked experienced democratic leaders to deal with the new realities. A culture of mutual distrust among the elite prevailed, while the old and decadent political order still worked hard to reverse the situation. Political and socio-religious conflicts, therefore, were difficult to avoid. The national leadership was dramatically split apart. Because the nation’s economic fundamentals were brittle in the midst of the East Asian monetary crisis, it was as though Indonesia at that time had no future. Beyond that, as the heritage of the New Order, corruption was rampant, and people lost confidence in the government’s ability to cure the situation. It was in these turbulent and confusing circumstances that I was entrusted to lead the Muhammadiyah Movement, one of the most influential Islamic socio-cultural mainstreams in my country, though I felt I lacked the necessary background and experiences to cope with this critical and dangerous political uncertainty.

Soon after, Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama, together with prominent interfaith leaders (Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist), took the initiative to consolidate the nation’s socio-cultural forces in an effort to save the future. Fortunately, our endeavors were highly appreciated and supported by almost all societal segments in Indonesia. My philosophy is simple: not only believers have the right to live and prosper in Indonesia, but non-believers-even atheists-have the right to coexist with believers, on the condition that they respect and honor each other peacefully. Peace is always costly, but without peace, life becomes irrelevant and meaningless!

The Ramon Magsaysay Award has surely confirmed what I have done and will do to honor peace and understanding, and spurn enmity and hate.

No one is ever truly prepared for a natural disaster. The humanitarian interventions that follow are inevitably improvised and hasty, as relief workers make urgent arrangements to provide water, food, shelter, and sanitation and to relocate the displaced survivors. Such was the case in Sri Lanka when the great tsunami of 2004 left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands homeless. But as ANANDA GALAPPATTI knows, survivors of catastrophes like this one are also burdened by shock and grief, and by fear, insecurity, depression, rage, and wrenching social problems-psychosocial consequences of trauma similar to those of war. As a young medical anthropologist, he is devoting himself to these neglected needs.

ANANDA GALAPPATTI was born thirty-three years ago in London and spent his early childhood in Sri Lanka. After attending high school in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he studied psychology at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. The Sri Lanka to which he returned in 1996 was torn by bloody civil conflicts of many years running. The following year, he assisted Dr. Gameela Samarasinghe in a psychosocial epidemiological survey of Sri Lanka’s conflict zones. This revealed that 40-65 percent of those in the affected areas displayed signs of post-traumatic stress linked to war and violence. Yet, in all Sri Lanka there were fewer than ten psychologists specializing in trauma. To help fill this gap, Galappatti and Samarasinghe formed the War Trauma & Psychosocial Support Program (PSP).

Through PSP’s capacity-building program, twenty-four-year-old GALAPPATTI trained twenty psychosocial workers to serve the towns, villages, hospital, and refugee camps of Vavuniya, a war-demoralized district six hours from Colombo, and otherwise enabled the area’s primitive psychosocial sector with skill-building seminars, new intervention strategies, and resources such as databases and procedure manuals. In Vavuniya, GALAPPATTI observed that psychological suffering cannot be separated from the real-world circumstances of its origins, including war itself and “deeply rooted political divisions.” His approach adapted lessons from Western psychology to Sri Lankan conditions and religious practices.

Then, on December 26, 2004, came the tsunami. Among the hardest hit was Batticaloa on Sri Lanka’s east coast, a district like Vavuniya already traumatized by years of war. In January 2005, GALAPPATTI joined in founding The Mangrove, a network of organizations and individuals in Batticaloa dedicated to coordinating psychosocial aspects of the relief effort. Not wanting to be a “fly-in, fly-out” expert, GALAPPATTImoved directly to Batticaloa. As The Mangrove’s volunteer coordinator, he lobbied incessantly for better psychosocial services. He liaised with local, national, and international agencies; convened meeting after meeting for aid workers and psychosocial practitioners; and briefed newly arrived aid organizations. He set up a rapid assessment system to assist children in camps, organized training workshops, and mediated quarrels between aid organizations. Constantly networking, GALAPPATTI spread word of “best practices” and warned of harmful ones. Meanwhile, he and his collaborators made countless humane interventions, insisting that women in refugee camps have private places to bathe and sleep, that anxious students have their examinations postponed, that orphans be placed with relatives or familiar caregivers, and that families be granted privacy when identifying their dead.

In time, political violence and instability in Batticaloa forced The Mangrove to scale back its work and GALAPPATTI embarked on his doctorate in Scotland. Today, with his wife and small child, he is again living and working in crisis-torn Batticaloa. Despite his Western education, his colleagues say that he “thinks and acts as a Sri Lankan,” embracing his country’s pluralism and also its dangers. As a leader, they say, “he works with the group as one of them” and “gently and firmly gets them to think and act.”

In electing ANANDA GALAPPATTI to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his spirited personal commitment to bring appropriate and effective psychosocial services to survivors of war and natural disaster in Sri Lanka.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and friends.

I used to associate the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award with the public achievements of women and men who are household names across Asia. Therefore, I was stunned to hear that I too had been elected to receive this award. I soon learned that the Foundation’s Trustees sometimes choose to recognize work which takes place on a smaller scale. It was then clear to me that my responsibility in accepting this award is to draw attention to the enormity of the suffering caused by war and disaster and to the concerted efforts required to address it. I believe this Award to be a wonderful symbolic acknowledgement of the quiet work of so many committed colleagues who provide mental health and psychosocial services. It is also a reminder of our moral obligation to ensure that the support we offer is the best that it can be.

Effective psychosocial support work is usually low key. This means that workers can often be isolated and inadequately supported, whilst they try to respond to the needs of individual clients or entire communities. Yet, all the success in this field ultimately depends on the quality of the services that are delivered by these frontline workers. My experience is that creating practical and ethical communities of practitioners not only bolsters individual workers, but also creates opportunities for innovation and improvement in systems. In my work, I have also witnessed the potential that can be released when we collaborate across the boundaries of professional, institutional, geographic or social divides. When conditions are right, and enough goodwill is present, the capacity of joint efforts to transcend the limitations of individual actions is quite extraordinary. To me, collaboration is not merely desirable, but absolutely necessary.

As we have better understood how material and social conditions affect people’s wellbeing, the field of post-emergency mental health and psychosocial work has been compelled to seek alliances with others. We increasingly acknowledge the need to work with institutions that build shelters, manage refugee camps, rejuvenate local markets, provide education, deliver healthcare, give protection and advocate for justice. We also recognize that suffering caused by conflict and disaster is often shaped by a larger context of poverty and social inequity. The challenge in our work is to develop comprehensive services and social care systems that can take account of this.

But even when we provide excellent services, the burden of living through the pain and loss wrought by violence remains squarely on the shoulders of those directly affected. Whilst humbled by the capacity for survival and resilience demonstrated by families and individuals I have come to know, I am also aware of the enormous effort that it takes for them to cope. For all their strength and resourcefulness, and despite our best efforts, for survivors, coping is hard work and often a daily struggle. I vividly remember a woman I met when I first started working in 1996. Nearly seven years earlier, her husband had been taken away by a group of armed men in the middle of the night, and was found murdered close to their house the following morning. Since then, she’d had to learn to provide for the family as a newly widowed woman, in addition to successfully raising and educating her young son and daughter. Despite the years that had passed, she and her two children felt unable to trust their own community from which her husband’s killers had come. Lacking opportunities or resources to move to another area, they remained isolated and lonely in the village. She described how still on some nights she and her children just held each other and cried, thinking about what had happened to their lives. Like the firing of the bullet that killed her husband, brief events such as the bombing of a bus, the sudden arrival of a massive wave, the torture of a captive or the displacement of a village all have repercussions that last entire lifetimes and have implications across generations.

The responsibility of our societies and our governments, therefore, is not only to ensure that survivors are provided with the best possible support and care after tragedies, but also to do everything in our power to minimize or avert these in the first place.

Thank You.

Elections are the central institution of Filipino democracy. As Governor GRACE PADACA puts it, they give voters a chance “to get the wrong people out of government and the right people in.” In practice, however, Filipino elections are almost always contests for power among an elite few. In most provinces, a handful of families controls political power from one generation to the next. Everyone else may vote, but the choices are limited to a cast of all-too-familiar characters. Such was the case in Isabela Province when Governor Padaca launched her unlikely political career.

MARIA GRACIA CIELO MAGNO PADACA was born in 1963 and crippled early in childhood by polio. Taunted by other children, she retreated into a world of books and learned to excel at school. She won scholarships to help pay her own way and, by twenty-one, had qualified as a certified public accountant. At Bombo Radyo in Cauayan, Isabela, she took an accounting job and, almost serendipitously, was soon a broadcaster, too. This suited her, she says, because “I could be heard but not seen.”

Every day, for the next fourteen years, hard-hitting “Bombo Grace” took up the issues of the day over the radio. In Isabela, the Dy family controlled politics from the governor’s mansion to the smallest town. As day-by-day PADACA exposed the province’s intractable problems-a stagnating rural economy, multifaceted corruption, a plague of illegal gambling and logging, a ravaged environment-she came to believe that many of them were rooted in the intractable Dys. Yet few dared to challenge them. “This is not what I had been taught democracy should be,” she said. Vowing not to be someone who complained constantly “without lifting a finger,” in 2001 she ran for Congress.

With little money and no political base to speak of, PADACA crisscrossed the province in a borrowed truck, taking her case to the people. Her opponent from the ruling dynasty was declared the winner by forty-eight votes-this after a congressional election tribunal invalidated all the ballots marked “Grace.”

PADACA returned to the fray in 2004 to run for provincial governor. Her opponent was the incumbent, whose father and brother had also been governor. Bucking the opposition of thirty-three mayors and the hysterical charge that she was in league with terrorists, PADACA urged voters to “Free Isabela”, On election day-as her volunteers guarded the ballot boxes-they did. She won by more than forty-four thousand votes.

This was “the easy part,” PADACA says. As governor, she moved quickly to neutralize efforts by Dy loyalists to sabotage her governorship and astutely prioritized her agenda. She paid off two-thirds of the province’s huge debts and restored its fiscal credibility. She abandoned a bankrupt medical scheme for a sounder government-backed plan. And she launched a program to subsidize rice and corn farmers. These programs yielded fresh funds for new infrastructure, better medical coverage for more beneficiaries, and a boon for the province’s farmers and agribusiness sector. Meanwhile, PADACA increased the budgets for education and reforestation and made inroads against illegal logging and gambling. With the province on a healthy footing, she challenged the dynasty again in 2007 and was elected to a second term.

As she pursues her ambitious agenda today, Governor PADACA stays in close touch with her constituents. She challenges them to reach beyond their political comfort zones and to “defend what is good in society.” She reminds them that the people of Isabela are no longer “the victims of cheaters and opportunists.” Her victory is their victory, she says. “I will work every day to prove that democracy is the better choice.”

In electing GRACE PADACA to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes her empowering voters in the Philippines’ Isabela Province to reclaim their democratic right to elect leaders of their own choosing and to contribute as full partners in their own development.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends. Good afternoon.

You must have observed how the mere act of standing and sitting is difficult for me. Thankfully, people now pay much less attention to my physical handicap, as they focus more on the challenging things that I have hurdled and continue to face as leader of one of the largest provinces in the Philippines, the province of Isabela.

Four years after we Isabelinos freed ourselves from an oppressive political structure, we are happy that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation once more brings to focus what we dared do and succeeded in doing-make democracy work, especially in the matter of using wisely our right to elect our leaders. If our victory in Isabela has to be truly meaningful, it needs to be replicated in other parts of the country, especially that in less than two years, we will all once more go to the polls and elect not only our local leaders but the new president of the Philippines.

Sen. Barack Obama of the United States talks about the audacity of hope but many of us, Asians, who have suffered so much more but have also been blessed to rise above our many challenges, need also to talk about the burden of the brave-the need to continue succeeding after raising the hopes of our people. Because if we ourselves fall short of expectations, especially if those who are shaken by our radical actions continue to work against our people’s interests, we will have further weakened the faith of our people in democracy.

Amazing victories are actually very fragile, and need to be protected. Please don’t just be happy for us. Please continue to be supportive and encouraging. Many times, I need the encouragement very badly. Every success is not just one person’s job. That’s why I share this award with all of you who have been cheering me on, helping me and helping Isabela.

Lastly, kindly allow me to use this chance to pay my dues to the One Great Being who made all of this possible. Way back in 2001, when very few outside Isabela had even heard about a Grace Padaca, I already won the elections for congressman, but somebody else was proclaimed. But — electoral victory was not the most important thing to me. I just longed for the chance to be able to say to as many people as I could reach: “To God be the glory!” for all the many seemingly impossible things that were starting to happen then and were changing the situation in our province. I was deprived of that chance seven years ago, only to stand before all of you now, for no less than the Ramon Magsaysay Awards and proclaim not only the words “To God be the glory!” Because glory upon glory has happened. Now I can say to as many people as I can reach “All glory and honor is yours, almighty Father!”

To Him who blesses us all, and to all of you, maraming, maraming salamat po.

Among the many strategies to lift the world’s poor, one of the most hopeful has been microfinancing. Launched by Muhammad Yunus in 1976, the Grameen Bank provided small loans to destitute Bangladeshi women-to fund small businesses-and repudiated the conventional wisdom that the poor are not credit worthy. Today, the Grameen model is applied around the world. In the Philippines, the CENTER FOR AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT MUTUALLY REINFORCING INSTITUTIONS, or CARD-MRI, has been a leading innovator.

Jaime Aristotle Alip, the CENTER’s founder, was introduced to microfinance as a young staff member at Philippine Business for Social Progress. In 1986, along with Dolores Torres and Lorenza Bañez and other rural development workers, he founded CARD to assist landless rural women working on the coconut plantations of Laguna Province. With a start-up fund of twenty pesos and Alip’s “magic” typewriter-for writing grant proposals-the group set to work.

In early years of trial and error, the center applied the Grameen microcredit model. Its women borrowers guaranteed each other’s loans and pledged to make loan payments and savings deposits every week. The strategy worked. By 1996, CARD had thirteen branches and seven thousand members, many of whom were now self-employed: raising chickens, goats, and pigs; operating tricycles and street-side restaurants; and working as tailors, market vendors, and mini-storekeepers.

Alip and his partners complemented the CENTER’s lending program with livelihood-skills training and, in a strategic mid-course correction, modified their model to stress individual responsibility. They also launched a microinsurance program as a safety net against emergency expenses, so often a catastrophe for the poor.

In 1997, Alip converted four of the CENTER’s microlending branches into full-service banks, or CARD Bank. In 1999, CARD’s insurance program became a separate mutual benefit association offering life and disability insurance and a retirement savings fund. In Alip’s concept, these units-the banks, the insurance operation, and the microlending branches-were “mutually reinforcing institutions,” hence CARD-MRI. In 2005, CARD’s training center became a Development Institute, yet another “reinforcing institution.”

Today, CARD-MRI’s 629 branches span the Philippines. More than half a million poor women are members and two and a half million people are insured. The center’s loan-repayment rate is above 99 percent. This has allowed CARD-MRI to wean itself from outside grants for its banking and insurance programs. Instead, it relies on profits. It now achieves a return-on-equity of 12.5 percent on assets of US$18 million. Alip is targeting a membership of one million in the near future. Meanwhile, CARD has expanded to Cambodia and beyond.

The CENTER’s newest “reinforcing institution” is its Business Development Services. Its task is to help successful microentrepreneurs expand their businesses, accrue assets, and move into the economic mainstream.

This is the aspiration of every CARD member. But, as Alip and his colleagues acknowledge, only a few have advanced to become “mature clients,” owning an income-generating business with over US$2,200 in working capital and capable of employing from five to fifteen workers. Most remain poor. Even so, their lives are better for CARD. It is one of the insights of microfinance that even small additions to a family’s income can have profound consequences-for better housing, for better nutrition, and, most of all, for better education. Over time, these small benefits accumulate, securing and improving the lives of members and offering better hopes to the next generation.

Microfinance is not a panacea for poverty. But as practiced and enhanced by CARD-MRI in the Philippines, it is a hopeful path. Through it, says Alip, the poor are gaining control “over their resources and over their own destiny.”

In electing the CENTER FOR AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT MUTUALLY REINFORCING INSTITUTIONS to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes its successful adaptation of microfinance to the Philippines, providing self-sustaining and comprehensive financial services for half a million poor women and their families.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends.

Twenty-two years ago, with twenty pesos and a battered typewriter, I founded the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development together with fourteen rural development practitioners to bring the dream of sufficiency to poor landless rural folk to reality. Virtually unknown, with no track record, and armed only with its incorporators’ credibility and commitment, we envisioned to set-up a bank owned and managed by landless poor women. CARD received its first support in 1988 from the Asian Community Trust, then headed by Takayoshi Amenomori. During the initial years, we drew inspiration from Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank approach to poverty alleviation. After years of hard work with fellow incorporators-notably Dolores Mangubat Torres, now CARD Bank President and Lorenza de Torres Banez, Executive Vice President-the dream for a Landless People’s Bank became a reality when CARD Bank was granted a license to operate as the country’s first microfinance-oriented rural bank in 1997. In this journey, we were joined by Flordeliza Lanip Sarmiento, Executive Director of CARD NGO; Aristeo Dequito, now CEO of Business Development Services Foundation; and Elma Buedad Valenzuela, Associate Director of CARD NGO. They were CARD’s pioneer staff, who also worked selflessly so that services will reach poor women in remote villages. Alexander Dimaculangan, General Manager of CARD Mutual Benefit Association, made sure that innovative social protection products are also made available to members.

In 2002, we adopted the ASA approach and attained unprecedented growth, thanks to the strong support of its founder, Shafiqual Haque Choudhury.

Listening to our members, we found out that loans are not enough; they need an outlet for their produce, a well-made structure they can call home, higher education for their children, small balance deposits to draw upon in times of emergencies, build assets, create wealth. Thus, with six independent institutions comprising the CARD Mutually Reinforcing Institutions or CARD-MRI, we offer members with a broad range of financial and non-financial products and services.

The Nanays are at the center of our mission; they define our very own existence. We believe that increasing their access to financial and nonfinancial services will lead to economic empowerment. But more than access to resources, we maintain that control over these resources is even more empowering, leading to increased well being for themselves and their families, and to wider social and political empowerment. Translating this belief into action, many of our Nanays are now stockholders of CARD Bank. The Mutual Benefit Association, presently providing insurance coverage to more than two and a half million low-income Filipinos, is fully owned by our Nanays. Of CARD MRI’s 3,600 employees, one third are sons and daughters of our Nanays, who evidently have severed the bondage of intergenerational illiteracy. We will ensure that the management of CARD-MRI is passed on to their hands, and that their generations witness the end of poverty for their families.

May I request the CARD-MRI delegation to stand to be recognized.

It is with great honor that I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award on behalf of the CARD-MRI’s boards, whose expertise enriched us; the management and staff and their families, whose sacrifices sustained us; our partners, whose trust buoyed us; and finally, my late father, Jose de Castro Alip, who believed that a son’s dream can come true.