Two Pinoys among this year’s Magsaysay awardees

Two Filipinos and a group that builds homes for the poor using donations from overseas Filipinos were among seven persons or entities named yesterday to receive the prestigious Magsaysay Award.

The recipients of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award, considered Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, include Filipino businessman Antonio Meloto, 56, and his Gawad-Kalinga (Care-Giving) Community Development Foundation — both for community leadership.

Gawad Kalinga, begun 11 years ago by volunteers from the religious organization Couples for Christ, has built over 850 housing developments for free, providing over 100,000 grateful families with homes to call their own. It is committed to building 7,000 new communities by 2010, Gawad Kalinga said in a statement.

The charity is powered by donations, mostly from overseas Filipinos who "despaired over their country’s stubborn poverty and yearned to do something about it."

In the Philippines, "40 percent of urban families occupy what the Asian Development Bank calls ‘makeshift dwellings in informal settlements,’" Gawad Kalinga said.

Another Filipino, retired newspaper publisher Eugenia Apostol, 81, won the award for journalism, literature and creative communication arts. She was recognized for her "courageous example in placing the truth-telling press at the center of the struggle for democratic rights and better government in the Philippines."

This year’s other winners are Ek Sonn Chan of Cambodia for government service, Park Won-soon of South Korea for public service, Sanduk Ruit of Nepal for promoting peace and international understanding and Arvind Kejriwal of India for emergent leadership.

The Cambodian was recognized for his work in rehabilitating the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority.

Ek, 56, is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge terror and receives the Magsaysay award for "his exemplary rehabilitation of a ruined public utility, bringing safe drinking water to a million people. Ek combed his bloated work force for the best and brightest and set them to work locating and repairing the system’s myriad leaks, installing thousands of water meters and closing hundreds of thousands of illegal connections."

He had installed a computerized billing program financed by the French government and persuaded other lenders that his agency was a good risk. In 1997, Ek’s agency became an autonomous public enterprise and supported by international loans, underwent a major overhaul.

Park, 50, head of the Beautiful Foundation and Hope Institute, was honored for his "principled activism fostering social justice, fair business practices, clean government and a generous spirit in South Korea’s young democracy."

Park challenged individuals and companies to donate one percent of their income or time as part of efforts to rekindle Korean generosity and popularize philanthropy. Over 26,000 people have responded and the foundation has distributed the money to needy public-interest groups.

Ruit, 54, head of the Tilganga Eye Center, was cited for "placing Nepal at the forefront of developing safe, effective and economical procedures for cataract surgery, enabling the needlessly blind in even the poorest countries to see again."

Kejriwal, head of a citizen’s movement against corruption called Parivartan, was honored for "activating India’s right-to-information movement at the grassroots, empowering New Delhi’s poorest citizen’s to fight corruption by holding government answerable to the people."

The award is named after President Ramon Magsaysay, who died in a 1957 plane crash at Mt. Manunggal in Cebu. This year’s winners will be honored here on Aug. 31, when they receive their medallions, certificates and cash prizes. — AFP, AP