Over half a century of war and authoritarian rule has ravaged Laos, resulting in large-scale destruction, loss of lives, and a country that remains one of the world’s poorest. Yet it is a testament to the Laotian people that despite all this, here greatness of the human spirit has not been extinguished.

Born into a farming family, KOMMALY CHANTHAVONG lived through all her country’s tragedies. Losing her father in the Indochina War, she was a refugee at age thirteen, walking barefoot over six hundred kilometers from her village in eastern Laos to Vientiane to escape the bombings during the Vietnam War. Through sheer perseverance, she pursued her studies in Vientiane and in 1966 earned a nursing diploma; in 1972 she married and raised a family. After the communist takeover of Vientiane, life was extremely difficult and she had to walk long distances from village to village buying and selling goods between Laos and Thailand.Through these turbulent changes, one thing remained constant for KOMMALY—her love for silk weaving, which she learned from her mother when she was only five years old; in fact, fleeing her village in 1961 all she took with her were heirloom pieces of woven silk handed down from her grandmothers. In Vientiane, seeing war-displaced, rural women in desperate need of work, she used her meager savings to buy looms, and in 1976 started in her home a weaving group of ten women, whom she called the “Phontong Weavers.”

Thus began KOMMALY’s valiant efforts to help women earn a living and revive Lao silk weaving, a deeply esteemed tradition rapidly disappearing because of the convulsions of war. Her original group grew to become Phontong Handicraft Cooperative—a network of Lao artisans now spanning thirty-five villages and connecting over 450 artisans. Impressed by her success, the Lao government leased to KOMMALY in the early 1980’s forty-two hectares of land in northeast Laos for use as a silk farm. It was barren, heavily bombed-out land, littered with unexploded landmines that KOMMALY and her group had to personally dig out before they could start planting trees. This has since become Mulberries Organic Silk Farm, dedicated to the revival of Lao silk production, with hectares planted to mulberry trees, specially-built temperature-controlled buildings to house all stages of silk production, a large garden providing raw materials for natural dyeing, and a cattle-raising area producing manure as organic fertilizers. Since its establishment, the farm has trained over a thousand farmers and weavers and has created over three thousand jobs.

But KOMMALY’s initiatives went even further. In 1990 she started Camacrafts, a non-profit project that markets traditional Lao and Hmong handicrafts, working with hundreds of women in twenty villages. Three years later, she created Mulberries, a social enterprise that initiates income-generating projects around traditional arts and crafts, including the production of mulberry tea, wine, and soap. More than two thousand villagers in five provinces have benefitted from this. In 1993, the Lao Sericulture Company was launched to oversee and manage KOMMALY’s many initiatives. Her amazing work has covered the whole cycle of silk production, from growing mulberry trees, raising silkworms, creating natural dyes, to training, research, provision of tools, and local and international marketing of highly-prized handmade silk items. Despite numerous adversities, she has traversed villages to personally teach and encourage weaving, and to patiently set up silk houses where young women and men can weave world-class products. The soft-spoken KOMMALY says of her decades-long work, “Our goal is to strengthen the position of women by giving them a dependable income and thus improve the chances of their children.” Clearly, she has done this—and much more.

In electing KOMMALY CHANTHAVONG to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her fearless, indomitable spirit to revive and develop the ancient Laotian art of silk weaving, creating livelihoods for thousands of poor, war-displaced Laotians, and thus preserving the dignity of women and her nation’s priceless silken cultural treasure.

I am very happy on this occasion to accept the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. It is a great honor for myself and all my co-workers in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). This distinguished award will light the way into the future of our work, and will give energy and strength to the small community of silk producers that I lead.

In the past women in remote rural villages, in mountainous regions like the place where I was born, did not have the same rights as men because women were only given the responsibility of raising children and doing household work. In those days women had limited opportunities for education, and were, therefore, unable to contribute to the family by earning money the way men did. But producing silk and weaving were ways with which women could make money to assist in caring for their families. This gave them a voice with which to speak to men regarding their families and communities; slowly this livelihood raised the status of women in our society.

Silk production and weaving are the proud ancient knowledge of Lao women, and many rural women passed on this knowledge from mother to daughter for many generations. Lao women have a responsibility to guard and develop this wonderful cultural heritage.

Silk production and weaving have created livelihoods for young women in their rural villages, thus reducing the need to flee to large towns and cities in search of work. In these places, many of them are at risk in so many ways.

The things you are hearing from my heart about the rights of women, the effort to preserve the proud heritage of silk handicrafts, and the flight of women to the cities to find work—these are all things that have motivated me to pour all my abilities—body and soul—into establishing this small concern that I have led since 1976.

It is my observation that the handicraft production that my co-workers and I are supporting has reduced the destruction of our forests caused by slash-and-burn upland rice farming. This is also protecting our water resources for developing agricultural production, in accordance with the policy of the Lao PDR government, which has called on all sectors to implement with urgency.

My co-workers, the villagers, and I are working with energetic enthusiasm to build an auspicious stairway on which we hope our future efforts will ascend until we achieve the lofty goals we have set for ourselves. It is the responsibility of our young people—especially our young Lao women—to take up the role of continuing this enterprise.

The strength and generous hearts of hardworking young women in this effort may encounter difficulty, so the cooperative assistance of the Lao Party and government, private citizens, international organizations, NGOs and other organizations will be needed. These young women will need our financial investment, our collective wisdom, and our technical expertise to help them continue our courageous endeavor.

We confidently believe that a good quality of life—and lasting security for individuals, families and communities—will require the support of the people from within Laos and all those with hearts to help, who will together build a new and bright generation that understands their responsibility for the future of their community.

Finally, I want to again express my deep gratitude to the president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and the foundation’s trustees for choosing to honor me with this distinguished award. Thank you!

Corruption is a plague on nations. In rooting out corruption, the work of government in strengthening systems of transparency and accountability is crucial. But ultimately, success still depends on ethical public servants and a vigilant public. In India, forty-year-old government officer SANJIV CHATURVEDI is an inspirational example. Coming from a family of civil servants, CHATURVEDI joined the Indian Forest Service (IFS) because he loves interacting with people in the field and working in government. Posted as a divisional forest officer in Haryana state, Northern India, he quickly came face to face with the corruption infesting government. A young, idealistic officer, he did not turn away from the irregularities that he saw but resolutely worked to correct them.

Boldly, he investigated and exposed cases of malfeasance even when these involved powerful officials in the state. In his six years in the state cadre, he exposed anomalies which included the illegal construction of a canal that threatened the critical Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary; the use of public funds to develop an herbal park on private land owned by a high official; the underpayment of license fees; and the rigging of government auctions. In a foreign-funded afforestation program, CHATURVEDI discovered that 90 percent of the plantations existed only on paper, and that funds had been embezzled through the faked signatures of allegedly participating self-help groups and nonexistent workers. Forty forest officers were suspended as a result of his investigation.

Under intense pressure from high state officials affected by his campaign, he was deputed to New Delhi as deputy secretary and chief vigilance officer at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he continued his anti-corruption campaign, exposing and filing cases involving irregularities in government procurement; contracts awarded to favored service providers; kickbacks in building construction; a scam in which government employees collected the pensions of dead pensioners; and the collusion between government officers and suppliers of fake medicines. Relentless, he did not waver even when cases involved high officials in state and central governments, well-connected businessmen, or members of his own staff. At great personal cost, he was harassed, suspended, demoted, hounded and humiliated with false charges, and put “in the freezer.” All these did not stop him.

CHATURVEDI is not a circumstantial whistleblower, but one genuinely seeking to reform the system from within. He meticulously investigates cases, submits documented reports, and pursues criminal and administrative action to punish the guilty. Actions he has taken have bolstered government revenues, and resulted in the recovery of stolen public funds and the suspension or removal of erring officials. Still, CHATURVEDI is not simply adversarial. He zealously performs his regular duties, carries out meaningful projects, and supports and protects honest employees. Within the sphere of his authority, he has initiated changes in operational systems to ensure transparency and accountability—whether these be better procedures in tracking public complaints or ensuring that wages and benefits of contractual employees actually go to them.

As a junior officer, CHATURVEDI’s reach and powers are limited but his integrity and courage have received wide media attention, though he does not himself seek it. On several occasions India’s president and prime minister have intervened to support and protect him from unjust persecution. While his story remains unfinished, he has already become a role model in the bureaucracy and for a public often overwhelmed by inertia and powerlessness. Amazingly, despite what he has gone through, CHATURVEDI has not yielded to disillusion. “Despite all the challenges, I have great optimism in the country, in our people,” he quietly asserts. “I have never entertained the thought of leaving the service. Never.”

In electing SANJIV CHATURVEDI to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his exemplary integrity, courage and tenacity in uncompromisingly exposing and painstakingly investigating corruption in public office, and his resolute crafting of program and system improvements to ensure that government honorably serves the people of India.

This award has come at a very crucial juncture for me. It is a victory of our national motto, which is Satyameva Jayate, meaning that ultimately truth prevails. For me, it is not a personal award for me; the credit really goes to all the persons who supported me consistently in my endeavours to bring out a transparent and clean government system.

The concept of the All-India Services, to which I belong, is a very unique feature of our constitution where officers are recruited through the central government but occupy all strategic positions in the state governments. The central government has final powers of control over them. The founding fathers were well aware of the importance of these services and, in the words of Sardar Patel, one of our founding fathers and our first home minister:

“The Union will go—you will not have a united India, if you have not a good all-India service which has the independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security that you will stand by your word and that after all there is the Parliament, of which we can be proud where the rights and privileges are secure…. This Constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of service which will keep the country intact.”

Like many other developing countries of Asia, in our country also, corruption is a very serious problem. Corruption is not just about money changing hands. It is linked to basic human dignity and the dreams of our young generation in ensuring a fair recruitment system, the delivery of public services, and issues of illegal mining and deforestation leading to climate change. There is no such effective antidote to this problem as an honest and robust civil service. No amount of individual activism or voluntary action, however genuine, can replace this. I would like to remind those here today what the late President Ramon Magsaysay said, that it is the duty of government to bring dignity to the life of every citizen and that once you are in government service, you cease to belong to all other affiliations and belong exclusively to the people.

During my tenure in the environment, forest and healthcare sectors, I had to face stiff resistance from some of the most powerful elements of the system on a range of issues including illicit felling of trees, poaching of rare species, corruption in afforestation projects, supply of dubious medicines, irregularities in government recruitments, vested interests in the purchase and supply of medical equipment, and the problem of large scale absenteeism of health workers. However I was able to bring these issues to a logical conclusion, as in our country the system of checks and balances established by the constitution is still working, and there are institutions in the form of the judiciary, parliamentary committees and the independent media to provide support.

The majority of the population of our country is in age group of fifteen to thirty-five years, and there is a strong urge to eradicate corruption and to bring a transparent and equitable system. This popular support was reflected in the anti-corruption movement of 2011, and in recent elections. I sincerely hope that the pressure built by this young generation will help to eradicate the problem of corruption.

I once again express my deep gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for honoring me with such a prestigious award. This will give me further strength to fight the evil of corruption, and will act as a huge morale booster for all honest and sincere civil servants. I accept this award with a huge sense of responsibility, and promise to try my best to live up to the standards set by the luminary community of Magsaysay awardees.

In a time that has seen nations violently torn apart by ethnic and religious wars, it is important to be reminded of the healing power of the arts in showing that while culture is what makes people of various ethnicities, religions, and nationalities distinct, it is also culture that connects them in the awareness of a shared humanity that is enriched by such differences.

This truth lies at the heart of the lifework of LIGAYA FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA. Born to a prominent Catholic family in Marikina, Metro Manila, FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA had always loved dance and the arts. A turning point in her life came when she married a schoolmate and moved to his home in Sulu where, in the next three decades, she immersed herself in the rich cultural life of the Muslim South. In the midst of the region’s secessionist and insurgent conflicts, she turned her love for the arts into a vocation as cultural researcher, educator, artist and advocate of the indigenous arts of the southern Philippines, particularly the Sulu Archipelago.

Her signature involvement has been the study, conservation, practice and promotion of the dance style called pangalay (“gift offering,” or “temple of dance” in Sanskrit), a pre-Islamic dance tradition among the Samal, Badjao, Jama Mapun, and Tausug peoples of the provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. A highly intricate and expressive dance of many variations, traditionally performed in weddings and other festive events, pangalay has the richest movement vocabulary of all ethnic dances in the Philippines and is the country’s living link to the ancient, classical dance traditions elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Fascinated by its beauty and recognizing its importance in the cultural heritage of the Sulu Archipelago and the entire Filipino nation, she was saddened to see that pangalay was becoming a marginalized tradition. Thus she committed her life to patiently documenting the dance and its allied expressions; teaching the dance using a method she personally developed, promoting it by choreographing and organizing performances, and making it known to the world through her lectures, performances, and writings on pangalay and the visual arts of the Sulu Archipelago.

Working mainly in an individual capacity and using her own personal resources, she inspired the formation of performing arts groups, networked with dance scholars and practitioners in Asia, and presented both traditional and innovative pangalay choreographies in and outside the country. Moving back to Metro Manila in 1999, she formed the AlunAlun Dance Circle (ADC) and lent her own home for a dance studio—to study, teach, and perform pangalay and other traditional dance forms. The group has since done hundreds of performances and workshops throughout the country.

For FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA, traditional dances like pangalay are not museum pieces but something to be nurtured as a living tradition that grows as societies change. Thus she has innovated with pangalay performances done to modern music, conveying contemporary themes like women’s rights and environmental conservation. Yet she has always stressed that art must stay rooted in the basic values that humanize—beauty, grace, a disciplined spirituality, and harmony with nature and fellow humans. “Without looking to the past,” she says, “something really new cannot be created.”

In electing LIGAYA FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her single-minded crusade in preserving the endangered artistic heritage of southern Philippines, and in creatively propagating a dance form that celebrates and deepens the sense of shared cultural identity among Asians.

As a youngster in 1954, I shook hands with a smiling, tall, gentleman. He was Ramon Magsaysay, the popular third president of the Republic of the Philippines. I imagine that that handshake more than half a century in advance was a prelude of this stunning event, with me as a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Two decades later in 1975, the Tambuli Cultural Troupe, which I founded the year before, performed on this Main Theater stage, in celebration of Philippine Independence Day. The troupe performed again at the CCP in 1976 at the Little Theater, in conjunction with the first Tawi Tawi Arts and Crafts Exhibits, which I organized. The goodwill performances were simply magical for me and the young dancers from the Sulu College of Technology and Oceanography, a unit of the Mindanao State University in Bongao, Tawi Tawi. Our cultural activities during those Martial Law years served as a unifying force, and painted a favorable image of the Tausug, Samal, Badjaw, and Jama Mapun peoples of the Sulu archipelago. Thankfully, my work gained momentum, inspired by the countless native co-workers whose cooperation enabled me to document their artistic heritage of which every Filipino can be proud. Two National Artists for dance also inspired me: Leonor Orosa-Goquingco and Francisca Reyes-Aquino, herself a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee in 1962.

What else can a cultural worker say while savoring this moment of magic with deepest feeling? Not much, except to emphasize the importance of keeping alive the folk artistic expressions that link us to our past and to one another, and to the rest of Asia and the world. I appeal for renewed efforts to develop a sensible program for dance education and conservation of indigenous dance forms, and to provide facilities conducive to the well-being of dancers. Allied to this, I appeal for more assistance and other incentives for academic research and publication. I wish more government and private institutions in the Philippines would be sincerely responsive to the plight of researchers and authors who need funds—more than sympathy—to carry on with their work. Their findings will enable others in the cultural sector to teach and write better, conserve, create, and innovate for the greater glory and growth of artistic traditions in the Philippines.

Of special interest are living artifacts or records of the past like pangalay, also known as igal or pansak—a dance tradition that affirms our cultural affinities. To see beyond the authentic nature of pangalay is to see the essence of Filipino ancestry: artistically refined, dignified, and profound.

Safeguarding an artistic tradition like pangalay goes beyond sharing its beauty and versatility through changing times. It is promoting respect for tradition which is vital to national identity and unity. A fast-changing world with unstoppable growth patterns needs the silent eloquence of an ancient symbol like pangalay or igal residing in a moving body to express what it feels than what it sees. Respecting such symbols can contribute to the greatness of the Filipino nation.

Honorable trustees, thank you very much. Fellow cultural workers, I share this recognition with you. Mga kalasahan ku, mga bagay ku, mga kakampungan ku, magsarang sukud tuud makaan kamimun. Mabuhay!

Monumental disasters in recent years have starkly exposed the vulnerabilities of the world’s poor, but have also shown that there is a tremendous wellspring of human empathy that can be tapped to help them. The formidable challenge is to find ever better, more sustainable ways of organizing the effort to help those in need.

In India, ANSHU GUPTA left his job in a well-known firm to devote himself to this task. His journey began in 1999, when he and his wife contributed sixty-seven pieces of personal clothing for the use of the homeless during winter. This experience drew their attention to the vast quantities of underutilized cloth and other materials lying unused in India’s urban households, while many rural poor die because they do not have enough clothing. Thus GUPTA founded Goonj, a volunteer organization built on the powerful, life-changing lessons he learned: that much more than random disaster relief needed to be done; that better ways of mobilizing public concern and assistance had to be organized; and most importantly, that giving must put at the center the recipient’s rights and dignity rather than the giver’s goodness and satisfaction. For GUPTA, extreme poverty is actually a continuing human disaster; hence, giving must have no season. Choosing cloth as an entry point for giving, he has seen its importance for a person’s dignity and survival in a vast country where, aside from disastrous flooding, the winter cold kills many who are underclothed. GUPTA’s own epiphany came in meeting a poorly-clad six-year-old girl who grew up with corpses because her father eked out a living picking up abandoned dead bodies and cremating them for a fee. When he asked the girl what she did to avoid the cold in Delhi’s harsh winter, she said: “When I feel cold, I hug a dead body and sleep.”

Goonj is now a movement working in twenty-one of India’s twenty-nine states, and is much more than a channel for clothing and other recycled articles. Through its staff, its thousands of volunteers, and numerous partner organizations, Goonj redistributes contributed items, and processes cloth and others to fit the identified needs of recipient groups. Dormant, underutilized cloth—including cloth scraps and loose threads—are used to fabricate essential articles like rugs, blankets, mattresses, and even clean cloth sanitary pads, as a hygienic alternative to the rags that poor girls and women use during their menses. Goonj has branded them “MY Pads,” producing to date over three million sanitary pads that are the cheapest in the world, while raising the taboo subject of menstrual hygiene as an issue of social concern.

The Goonj strategy involves the poor in identifying their needs, employs them in recycling and fabrication, and inspires poor communities to undertake projects like building bridges and repairing schools in exchange for clothes and other essential articles. Every year, over a thousand such projects have been undertaken in rural India under Goonj’s “Cloth for Work” initiative, a program that innovatively converts cloth into a development resource.

Today, Goonj handles more than one million kilograms of materials annually; has a wide network of collection and processing centers; and runs a vigorous program that educates the public in sustained and responsible giving. It has had an impact on the lives of millions. Paradoxically, Goonj is concerned less with its organizational growth than with the spread of its ideas. GUPTA says, “We live in a world which has problems in volumes. We need solutions in volumes, and people who work on these in volume. We all need to get up and do something.”

In electing ANSHU GUPTA to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his creative vision in transforming the culture of giving in India, his enterprising leadership in treating cloth as a sustainable development resource for the poor, and in reminding the world that true giving always respects and preserves human dignity.

On behalf of millions of people in India and the rest of the world, our sincere thanks for this acknowledgment. This award is recognition to the many ‘taken for granted, non-issues,’ and the viable solutions which lie amongst us. In an era of machines, this is a recognition to the needles. We see cloth as a needle in the holistic human development process, and a piece of cloth in the form of a sanitary pad as a needle in the bigger struggle for dignity for millions of women.

We don’t want to change the world; we are ordinary people, we want to improve it first. We strongly feel that somewhere, something is wrong. Because despite a whole lot of us in this room and many similar rooms across the globe who are applying so much intellect, resources, good intentions and hard work to improve our societies, poverty and other troubling issues are not getting resolved. The gap is growing, the issues becoming more complicated.

Perhaps it is time for us to change our vocabulary, to remove demeaning words like “donor” and “beneficiary,” and treat everyone as a stakeholder. It’s time to change the meaning of disaster and accept that half the world doesn’t need a disaster, as poverty is the biggest ongoing disaster. It’s time to stop imposing development agendas and policies, and listen to the people whom these decisions affect. It’s time to reduce charity and dignify giving. It’s time to re-look into our knowledge and intellect and value the wisdom of the grassroots. It’s time to stop treating money as the only currency in the world and start looking for parallel currencies for development.

Today thousands of tonnes of second-hand material, so far treated worldwide as disaster relief material or charitable subject-object, constitute our organization’s currency. Goonj’s ‘Cloth for Work’ invites communities to choose their own problem—whether it is a broken road or a dirty pond, whatever is a real concern—work on that with your wisdom, pay back to the nation in a currency you have—called “labor”—and you are rewarded in a currency that people of the nation have—called “material.” It is about the barter between these two new currencies, labor and material, creating a new economic model. Maybe somewhere in this process is the genesis of a parallel economy which is not cash-based but trash-based.

I hope that when the celebrations around this year’s award are over, there will be some people out there—from the governments, academia, development sector, research organizations, policy makers, opinion leaders and decision makers—who will see this work as a possibility which can turn the tide on the colossal waste we all are facing.

This world is the world of volume. The problems are in volume. We do need solutions in volume and the people who work on those are also needed in volume. No need to have intellectual debates on either/or. It is about AND. Right now we do need more and many different solutions.

We have just been able to touch upon some issues in our part of the world. Goonj is a constructive and positive movement by the common people, for the common people. With all humility from this prestigious stage, we want to give a copyright for others to copy our ideas. Do copy, replicate, add more wisdom and take our Goonj solution to other nations, geographies and communities. Let’s see what can be achieved with the world’s so-called waste. For us, the mission is to grow as an idea and not just as an organization.

I do have high hopes for the youth, even as they are the most troubled with the present; the future is in their hands. In the end, doing good is a collective responsibility and we all truly want to live in a better world.

Thank you for listening and calling us here. I dedicate this beautiful day and this award to my parents—up above watching as shining stars; my family; the amazing Goonj team for standing together in the best and worst of times; the volunteers, and the people of my country, for being with us. Thank you and Jai Hind.

In Myanmar, a process of democratization is underway after decades of isolation, economic stagnation, and social instability due to war and state repression. In a transition that is complex and uncertain, the building of social cohesion and a strong civil society is crucial to the country’s pursuit of peace and prosperity. Fifty-five-year-old KYAW THU is an exceptional figure in this story. KYAW THU is a hugely popular, award-winning actor in Myanmar who has acted and directed in over two hundred films; scion of a wealthy family in the movie business, he is professionally successful and socially privileged. Yet, he lives simply and is a devout Buddhist.

In 2001, with a colleague in the movies, he founded Free Funeral Services Society (FFSS) in Yangon, to help relieve the emotional and financial burden of the poor in properly burying their dead. Such a public service is both essential and unique in a predominantly Buddhist society where the proper funerary rites are crucially important but often beyond reach because of high costs, the lack of state welfare assistance, and the taboos surrounding the handling of the dead. Starting with just a single hearse, FFSS has grown to become not only a provider of free funeral services but also of a whole complex of social services. FFSS operates almost entirely through private donations and hundreds of volunteers. Its free funeral services cover everything from caskets, a fleet of hearses, mortuary facilities, burial and cremation, and funeral coordinators. To date, FFSS has undertaken over 150,000 free funeral services.

Caring not just for the dead but also for the living, FFSS opened a charity clinic manned by fifty volunteer doctors and a full staff. With five ambulances and 24-hour medical emergency response service, it offers services from maternal and dental care to blood transfusions and eye surgeries. It has provided health care to over 143,000 patients since it opened in 2007. An FFSS school offers free vocational training courses, classes for children, review classes for academic qualification examinations, and a library. FFSS also mobilizes and provides humanitarian assistance to refugees, and to victims of war and natural disasters. The society’s services are freely available to all in need, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.

KYAW THU leads all these efforts. He has used his personal funds, and his popularity as an actor has generated donations and support from all sectors. In a country where people handling the dead, like coffin makers and gravediggers, are viewed as lowly social outcasts, KYAW THU has himself carried coffins and driven the funeral hearse. He gives talks all over the country to spread the virtues of kindness and volunteerism. His example has inspired others in Myanmar to form free funeral service and other self-help groups.

His work goes beyond simple philanthropy. He has lent his prominence to other causes: distributing food and water to protesting monks during the 2007 “Saffron Revolution”; sending ambulances to aid student demonstrators recently protesting restrictive government policies; and publicly expressing his opinions on social issues. He and his wife have been detained; he was barred from filming or acting from 2007 to 2012; and FFSS has been harassed by authorities uneasy about KYAW THU’s influence. All these have not deterred him; they have only further enhanced his moral authority.

KYAW THU has no political ambitions and aspires neither for power nor greater glory. Driven by unbounded altruism, he says: “As an actor, I used to crave publicity, and chased after money and fame; now I want nothing else but to help those in need.”

In electing KYAW THU to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his generous compassion in addressing the fundamental needs of both the living and the dead in Myanmar—regardless of their class or religion—and his channeling personal fame and privilege to mobilize many others toward serving the greater social good.

Mingalar Par; an auspicious day to you all!

First of all, I am truly honored and grateful to receive this recognition from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and its Board of Trustees for my public service.

Today also marks our 34th wedding anniversary. My wife, Myint Myint Khin Pe (Shwe Zee Kwet) has tirelessly walked hand in hand with me in providing philanthropic services. This prestigious award, which I receive today, fulfills a sense of completeness towards our meaningful wedding anniversary.

As I accept this award, I would like to honor and dedicate this to the late U Thukha, my mentor and co-founder of the Free Funeral Service Society (Yangon). While we are witnessing the political transition in my country, Myanmar, this award is a true inspiration for me, for our society and for all those associations in our country which actively engage in charitable work and public service.

I have always believed that in movies, we actors or artists represent the true lives of our people—their feeling is my personal feeling. With this in mind, I have entered the world of noble work.

Although our organization was established in 2001 with the singular aim of offering free funeral services, we have since extended our services to various areas. Our interventions now include free health care services, free education, natural disaster response, humanitarian assistance to war victims, etc. Through development work and humanitarian assistance, we promote public participation and enhance public knowledge in the development of civil society in our country.

Public services in Myanmar have been deteriorating. We are trying our best to address issues where we can, and we are pleased with what we have done so far. However, in the long-run, the government should establish institutionalized policies, regulations and legal frameworks; and they should implement these systematically.

Although the process of democratic reforms is underway, I still see no difference in the people’s lives, especially the disadvantaged. I have witnessed this during my visits to various regions across the country, where I deliver philanthropic talks, attend ceremonies to open free healthcare clinics, and participate in dialogues, community events or meetings among social workers.

Despite the fact that we have increasing numbers of civil society organizations, we still have a lot to do to influence change in government policies to improve our economic and social environment. In Myanmar, there is a decline in moral standards and a worrisome trend towards materialism. The road towards our democratization, in my opinion, entails strong civil society organizations that can truly represent the voice of our people and hold the government responsible and accountable to the people.

Today, I accept this award on behalf of the women and men of Myanmar who join hands with me in building a better nation. For in the depths of my heart, this award is much more than an honor. It is a source of strength and inspiration for me and my people.

To conclude, I would like to express my sincere gratitude:

To the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation;

To my father U Sein Tin and my mother Daw Mya Than, who are here with me today;

To my wife, who has given me strength, encouragement and inspiration to live an ethical life and a life worth sharing;

To my daughter Myint-Mo Oo and her family, and my son Phyi Thein Kyaw—my beloved children towards whom I was not able to give my full fatherly love and care, but who willingly accepted and understood my time, commitment and contributions to public service.

I would also like to thank the staff, social workers and volunteers of the Free Funeral Service Society (Yangon), other organizations from all over Myanmar, and generous donors from Myanmar and abroad, all those who help in our work.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank Myanmar’s military regime, which in a way pushed me to have philanthropic motives, motives that triggered me to enter the world of service to the larger social good.