Magsaysay Institute for Transformative Leadership launched

MANILA, Philippines - The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation yesterday launched a trail-blazing project designed to expand the awardees’ impact in the Asian region - the Magsaysay Institute for Transformative Leadership.

“Through the Institute, we hope to create a unique hub for dialogue and reflection, sharing of best practices and leadership immersion, so that together with other transformative leaders, the Magsaysay laureates can better address Asia’s pervasive challenges of poverty and inequity, environmental degradation and deep-rooted social conflict,” Cynthia Rose Bautista, chair of the RMAF Board of Trustees told invited guests in an informal gathering yesterday.

Bautista said the Institute’s establishment was the product of brainstorming of past Ramon Magsaysay awardees during the Asia Forum, at the 50th anniversary event of the RMAF in 2008.

“We feel it is the right time to establish the Institute,” she said.

The awardees agreed that there should be a hub for dialogue and sharing of ideas, best practices and leadership immersion to harness people, particularly young people to be transformative leaders in the Asian region.

“We want to stress that the Institute is not Manila-centric or Philippine-based as it plans to reach the Asian region,” explains Carmencita Abella, RMAF president.

“People will collaborate with each other. There will be sharing of ideas. It will be a hub of solutions to address Asia’s pervasive problems and probably even the world,” she said.

“We also want to say that the Institute is not a grant as we don’t have money,” Abella added.

At the media lunch gathering held at the Ramon Magsaysay Center on Roxas Boulevard, Manila, the board also explained they would do away with predefined categories but that there will be no exclusion on awards on categories like journalism, literature or the arts.

This year’s awardees were cited for harnessing technologies to empower their countrymen and worked to create waves of progressive change across Asia.

The awardees are Harish Hande of India, for bringing solar lights to a country where half of all households have no electricity, Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni for establishing IBEKA foundation that built 60 small power plants harnessing the energy of water stored in dams to bring electricity to half a million people;

Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation from the Philippines, for using an ancient, near-forgotten technology, the ram pump, to help impoverished communities on Negros island; Indonesian Hasanain Juaini for setting up an Islamic school that promotes values of gender equality and religious harmony; Nileema Mishra, a lender to India’s poorest and Koul Panha from Cambodia who is working to restore democracy in his country.

The award, often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, is named after President Ramon Magsaysay, who died in a plane crash in 1957.

The winners are to receive their awards in Manila on Aug. 31.