2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee: Gethsie Shanmugan, a lifetime psychosocial worker of Sri Lanka

Gethsie Shanmugan as she was being presented 

during the awarding ceremonies.

Gethsie Shanmugam has spent most of her life in psychosocial work starting with children and adults displaced by the civil war in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka in 1983 after she retired from teaching.

"My work with children and adults living with war, disaster and other hardships has shown me that even in the context of terrible violence, loss and suffering," she stressed, "there is always the possibility of growth, caring and hope. Life can not only continue despite pain and hardships, but can take on new meaning and purpose."

She spoke about how she encouraged and assisted children on the small tidal island of Nasivantheevu in the mid-1990s who "found the courage to negotiate with the warring parties to allow safe passage for the bus that took them to school, enabling access to an education that would transform their lives."

She told about a soldier who lost both legs in the war, thrice considered suicide, and mistrusted others not of his ethnic tribe. Her personal attention taught the young man "to set aside his anger to care for an older woman from a community he deeply mistrusted."

She worked with widows who were "suddenly thrust into new roles in a society that stigmatized them ... [and their] determination and hard work enabled them to overcome challenges to secure a life for themselves and their children."

Shanmugam, a member of the minority Tamil community, took up psychology while teaching in Colombo and worked as a volunteer counselor when psychosocial work was still new in Sri Lanka. 

When she retired from teaching, she joined the Save the Children Norway (SCN). Here, she braved bombings, searches, threats of arrest in the war zones, crossed the Sinhalese-Tamil divide to do counseling work in collaboration with her colleagues, trained teachers and NGO workers.

In SCN, she was involved in the design of programs, research, training, and counseling in projects aimed at building capacities for psychosocial support in war-affected schools and at helping war widows, orphans, and traumatized children.

After SCN, she remained active as consultant and volunteer in organizations working with women and children suffering from war trauma, domestic violence, alcoholism, and sex trafficking. She led in establishing a pioneering temporary home for young people victimized by abuse and in trouble with the law.

After the tsunami of 2004 tsunami, Gethsie trained eighty school teachers in a government pilot program to provide a supportive environment for traumatized children. Using her experiences in various countries, she experimented with small, simple ways to build psychosocial resilience adapted to local conditions and the lack of trained professionals; and actively disseminated her knowledge through publications and the mass media.

Gethsie received the medallion and certificate from
Vice Pres. Leni Robredo and RMAF Chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

Her concluding remarks in her response to the Ramon Magsaysay Award: "Whether working with children or adults, with individuals or groups, my four decades of experience has taught me that healing and transformation always starts with the person. For people who are in deep pain to begin to heal, it is essential for them to gain self-awareness and acceptance, which in turn shapes their capacity for healthy relationships with others or even towards themselves. This kind of personal growth is often something people overwhelmed by suffering find difficult to do for themselves, but with support and loving care from another human being, like the beautiful lotus that emerges from the mud, these people can be helped to bloom despite the pain they have experienced.

"As individuals we often feel that we can't do big things. But we can do small things. All change starts with a person. When one person becomes brighter and relates to others with genuine love, then small groups of individuals can form around them, creating small ripples of change in the world.

"I believe that each of us is a tool for the healing of ourselves, for the healing of others and for the healing of the societies we live in. No matter who or where we are, we can play a role in making the world a kinder and better place. This is the message that I would like to share with you all."

Gethsie Shanmugam was elected to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of "her compassion and courage in working under extreme conditions to rebuild war-scarred lives, her tireless efforts over four decades in building Sri Lanka's capacity for psychosocial support, and her deep, inspiring humanity in caring for women and children, war's most vulnerable victims."

2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee: Tony Tay (Singapore) with his 'Willing Hearts'

'Willing Hearts,' a fully volunteer-based, secular and non-profit organization in Singapore, runs a soup kitchen that prepares and cooks six thousand meals a day for distribution at forty points around the island state.

Tony Tay with the other awardees seated behind him.

The hot, packed meals (segregated for the Muslims and non-Muslims) are for the needy: neglected and abandoned elderly, persons with disabilities, the sick, children of single-parent households, low-income families, and migrant workers.

Tony Tay founded this charity in 2003 starting with eleven volunteers. As of today, some three hundred regular volunteers operate the kitchen 365 days a year in a public community center.

Tay was born poor. Abandoned by their father when he was five years old, they were homeless with their mother engaging in transient jobs. He and a sister were put in an orphanage, and two other sisters were taken care by a foster family.

Tay dropped out of school at twelve, sought for food wherever he could, and worked at odd jobs. He persevered, slowly overcame poverty, and succeeded in the printing business he set up. He and his own family now live in modest comfort in his own home.

It was his mother that inspired him to start his 'one hot meal revolution': "[H]e was fifty-seven when, at his mother’s funeral, he was deeply moved by the great number of people who came to give their respects to his mother. Despite her own difficulties, she had devoted herself to charity work with the Canossian Sisters. Inspired, Tony and his wife began their share of doing good for others -- collecting unsold bread and vegetables from the market and bringing these to the Canossian convent to be given to the needy. Enlisting family and friends, they began to cook what they had gathered in their home kitchen, delivering packed meals to the poor and elderly."

Tay looks at 'Willing Hearts' as a way of being part of one family, one village considering that he did not have much of a family when he was growing up. “We are just sharing,' he said, 'sharing all that we have in life to make a better society.”

That simple sharing of food has fostered the spirit of volunteerism among taxi drivers (they deliver food packs), parents with their children (they help in the Willing Hearts kitchen--preparing ingredients, packing meal boxes, cleaning and washing), among others.

Tony Tay receiving the medallion and certificate from
Vice Pres. Leni Robredo & RMAF Chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

In his response after receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award, he expressed his gratitude to those who answered "YES" when he asked for help:

• the Canossian sisters to help collect extra bread that were not sold for the day from a bakery.
• to distribute the rest of the bread to those who need it;
• to collect the extra vegetables from wholesalers;
• to my wife when she asked to cook for the elderly who cannot cook for themselves;
• to all who asked for help along the way.

'Willing Hearts,' he said, 'is a journey of many who said "YES", yes to those in need. Willing Hearts started with one word -- YES.'

In electing Tony Tay to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognized 'his quiet, abiding dedication to a simple act of kindness – sharing food with others – and his inspiring influence in enlarging this simple kindness into a collective, inclusive, vibrant volunteer movement that is nurturing the lives of many in Singapore.'

2017 Ramon Magsaysay awardee: 'activist, victim, indigenous person' Abdon Nababan of Indonesia

Abdon Nababan.

Abdon Nababan is acknowledged today as the single most important person in the indigenous peoples (IP) movement in Indonesia. He has worked tirelessly with the movement for twenty-four years.

He is a Toba Batak from Sumatra, one of seventy million very ethnically diverse masyarakat adat (IP) of Indonesia.

Nababan began his social advocacy when he was still a student, and became an officer of a non-government organization (NGO) after graduation from Bogor University in 1987.

I became an activist in the late '80s,' he said, 'opposing the all-too-powerful New Order Regime. In the '90s I realized that I was also a victim. I am one of millions of Indigenous Peoples of Indonesia. At the time, I--an activist, a victim, an indigenous person--fought an industrial forest company in our ancestral lands.'

The land taken over by the big industrial company was actually ancestral land that belonged to his grandparents and other Toba Batak families.

'That company, however, was just a front for the real oppressor: authoritarianism and development,' he stressed. 'For them, we the Indigenous Peoples, were not wanted. We are to be oppressed, to be eradicated, criminalized, impoverished, victimized.'

After the fall of Suharto in 1999, he helped organize a congress that launched the mass-based organization called AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara or Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago).

AMAN today is the country's largest and most influential non-state organization with over 115 local and 21 regional chapters throughout Indonesia’s thirty-four provinces: these represent a collective membership of over 17 million. Before AMAN, Indonesia recognized only one million masyarakat adat.

The indigenous peoples have become a political force to reckon with. AMAN delivered 12 million votes to President Joko Widodo in the 2014 election after he made six commitments during the campaign to address the needs of the IPs. The government has yet to deliver on these commitments though. 

Under Nababan’s leadership, AMAN challenged the existing forestry laws. In 2012, they won a landmark constitutional court ruling that forests in IP territories are not “state forests,” hence, some fifty-seven million hectares of government-controlled forest land were returned to indigenous communities.

AMAN, with the support of NGOs, launched the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency in 2010 to create a single data base for verifying land and forest claims on ownership, use and tenure. With Nababan at the helm, they were able to submit to the government "indigenous maps" covering 8.23 million hectares in 2016.  

The constitutional court ruling and AMAN’s maps, however, are still awaiting implementation.

Nababan receiving medal and certificate from Vice Pres. Leni Robredo
and RMAF Chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

In his response to the award, he revealed that he accepted the challenge of the indigenous peoples of North Sumatra to run for governor of the province, which he described as 'so corrupt and violent ... controlled by mobs and drug dealers.'

In parting, he said: 'When differing opinions or interests manifests into violent conflicts, when the use of religion means more killings, when developing the economy means destroying the environment, standing here before you, I am offering the values and spirit of Indigenous Peoples to tackle present-day problems of our society and the environment--inequality, crimes, climate change--in a way that is not violent, but humane and sustainable. ... And let our countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, lead the world towards peace, where the well-being of people, plants, animals, water, soils and air prevail.'

Abdon Nababan was elected by the RMAF to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of 'his brave, self-sacrificing advocacy to give voice and face to his country’s IP communities, his principled, relentless, yet pragmatic leadership of the world’s largest IP rights movement, and the far-reaching impact of his work on the lives of millions of Indonesians.'

2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee: Lilia B. de Lima - honest, competent and dedicated public servant

Atty. Lilia B. De Lima as she was presented to the audience.

'One-stop, non-stop shop, no red tape, and no corruption.' That's how Lilia B. De Lima described the brand of service she instituted at the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) under her leadership for twenty one years.

For that, she got a rousing round of applause during the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awards presentation ceremonies on 31 August 2017.

She was appointed the first Director-General of the organization in 1995. She told former president Fidel Ramos who was in the audience: 'If not for you, sir, I wouldn't be here [for this award].'

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) noted that under her helm, PEZA became 'a showcase of successful regulatory reform, a model of honest and committed public service, and a key contributor to the nation's economic growth.'

'It wasn't a walk in the park,' she said. 'We inherited an extremely bloated bureaucracy. Trimming the fat by 60 percent was a long, torturous and emotionally draining process. It was the most bruising experience in my public career, Everything was thrown at me. But we did not waver, and we cleaned up.'

The awardee with Vice Pres. Leni Robredo
and RMAF Chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

'My twenty-one years at PEZA was a privilege as it was a commitment. It gave me the opportunity to serve my country and help generate employment for our people.'

PEZA generated some 6.3 million jobs for Filipinos in direct and indirect employment during her term.

She thanked the investors ;who trusted in our capability to ensure that their operations can be set up at the soonest time and at the least cost.'

'As we strengthened the organization, we also instituted sweeping structural and policy reforms to remain competitive and address the ever changing investment climate,' she said.

The country became one of the region's top investment destinations.

With De Lima at the helm, the number of PEZA ecozones increased by 2,000% (from the initial 16 to 343 by 2016); registered enterprises rose from 331 to 5,756; investments reached PhpP 3 trillion; and ecozone exports totaled USD629 billion. PEZA remitted to the national treasury PhP16.6 billion in corporate income taxes and dividends, and paid off the debt of PhP4.6 billon of its predecessor agency.

From day one, she emphasized, their mantra was 'absolute honesty and utmost service in all our dealings with our stakeholders.'

She added that she survived four presidents for only one simple reason: "do[ing] your job with integrity and professionalism [which] is the best credential you can have, and the only endorsement you will need.'

She expressed hope that PEZA will continue to be 'a clean and efficient organization with highly motivated, hardworking professionals.' 

The 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees with Vice Pres. Leni Robredo
and RMAF Chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

In recognition of 'her unstinting, sustained leadership in building a credible and efficient PEZA, proving that the honest, competent and dedicated work of public servant can, indeed, redound to real economic benefits to millions of Filipinos,' the RMAF board of trustees elected Lilia B. Delima as a recipient of the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award.

2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee: Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA)

It may be serendipity that the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) received the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award on its 50th year.

It celebrated its 50th Anniversary in April with a concert aptly titled Singkwenta (Fifty) which featured the best songs culled from around 500 plays--original, translated, or adapted--produced through the years.

The celebration was held at the PETA Phinma Theater at the PETA Center in Quezon City. This permanent home is a long way from the Rajah Sulayman Theater, converted from the ruins of the Spanish military barracks, where it all started in 1967 with the production of Bayaning Huwad, Filipino translation of Virginia Moreno's English play 'Straw Patriot.'

PETA president Cecile B. Garucho about to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay

Award from Vice Pres. Leni Robredo and RMAF chair Ramon del Rosario, Jr.

PETA was originally envisioned as a 'national theater' by its founder Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, Ramon Magsaysay awardee for public service in 1972 before the declaration of martial law. It remained active during the dictatorship and together with other groups by 'staging theater as a medium of protest and conscientization.' After 1986, it was ready 'to respond to both new and continuing challenges, and through its collective of artist-teachers, 'to directly engaged with the realities of people's lives.'

"We were taught early on that whatever we learned as artists,we were to share by teaching others especially non-theater people," PETA president Cecille B. Garrucho informed the audience during the awards presentation. "We were to use our art to serve. We went in small teams to barangays all over the country, The purpose was always to draw out the creative power of ordinary folk: women in poor communities, students and public school teachers, child workers in the sugar cane fields, farmers, workers and fisherfolks, It didn't matter whether they were literate or not. The PETA workshop's main goal was to give people the creative tools to tell stories that tackled ways to solve their common problems, that could bring about healing from trauma, and that spoke of their dreams and aspirations. As actors we would bring the stories of the people we met to life onstage so their voices could be heard. ..."

Garrucho acknowledging the award with two PETA officers

"[T]he artist members plunged into years of trailblazing work adding more productions to PETA's list of original plays," Garrucho added. "Collaborating with many sectors, PETA developed and refined its pedagogy of People's Theater, This we shared with groups across the country, with our partners in the Mekong Region and Asia, as well as with migrant Filipinos in Europe, North America and Australia."

From 2005 to 2008, PETA led the Greater Mekong Sub-region Partnership in mobilizing, mentoring and supporting performing artists from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and southern China. The mission was 'to effectively undertake advocacy-through-the-arts issues such as gender, health, sexuality, and HIV-AIDS.'

After typhoon Yolanda's devastation in 2013, the theater company launched Lingap Sining (Nurturing Through the Arts) in Leyte that creatively used the arts in various interventions like emergency relief, psychosocial debriefings, disaster preparedness and building of more resilient disaster risk reduction readiness in the communities.

PETA Chorale rendering the Makabayan Suite, a medley of 

nationalist songs from some of their play productions.

As an integrated, people-based cultural collective, PETA has major units to address specific missions: Kalinangan Ensemble as its repertory and performing arm, the School of People's Theater for its year-round training and development engagements, and a Special Programs unit for undertaking specific advocacies.such as women's and children's rights, plight of domestic and overseas workers, environmental protection, reproductive health, and electoral reform.

Thus, in recognition of 'its bold, collective contributions in shaping the theater arts as a force for social change, its impassioned, unwavering work in empowering communities in the Philippines, and the shining example it has set as one of the leading organizations of its kind in Asia, the board of trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation elected PETA as one of the awardees this year.  

2017 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee: Japanese Yoshiaki Ishizawa in Angkor Wat

The annual Ramon Magsaysay Awards presentation ceremonies on 31 August, birthday of the late president, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines is one event worth attending.

Here, one meets outstanding individuals "who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions that have transformed their societies for the better."  We learn about their extraordinary achievement from their citations, and hear directly from them their stories after receiving their medals and certificates.

This year's awardees comprise five individuals: Yoshiaki Ishizawa (Japan), Lilia de Lima (Philippines), Abdon Nababan (Indonesia), Gethsie Shanmugan (Sri Lanka), Tony Tay (Singapore), and one organization: Philippine Educational Theater Association or PETA (Philippines).

Yoshiaki Ishikawa as his citation was being read. Seated behind include the other awardees, 

Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo and RMAF board chair, Ramon R. del Rosario, Jr.

Ishisawa, an eminent scholar of Southeast Asian history and one-time president of Sophia University, is associated with Angkor Wat to which he has devoted fifty years of his life. This is a major Buddhist temple in the Angkor--inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992--which he first visited as a student in 1961. Since then he has been involved in its conservation except during the years of civil war and political unrest from 1970 until the Khmer Rouge went out of power in 1979. But by then, the Cambodian conservationists were all gone.

The conservation of Angkor, he said in his response to the award, "is not my efforts alone ... but of numerous friends and colleagues [and] his staff at the Sophia University Angkor International Mission [simply called the Sophia Mission]."

He started working again with the Cambodians in 1980, established international networks, campaigned for awareness and support in the Japanese media, and devised programs to protect and conserve Angkor. These all led to the launching of the Sophia Mission for research, training and conservation work.

Tourists today make the magnificent Angkor Wat in Seam Reap one of their major destinations in southeast Asia. What they see and enjoy as a premier cultural heritage of Cambodia came from Izhizawa's relentless leadership of Cambodians and Japanese experts in the conservation and restoration works.

They restored, for example, the Buddlist temple Banteay Kdei, excavated 274 statues of Buddha in 2001, and completed major repairs on the western causeway in 2007, which is now a key access to Angkor Wat.

Ishikawa about to receive his medal and certificate.

"Our reason," he said, "for insisting on rescuing Angkor Wat is because this would signify a call to the people to return to the peace that once characterized the Angkor period, as well as a call for them to rebuild their nation once more."

The appeal for Angkor's restoration is also "a plea for reconciliation between ethnic groups, and the revival of the [Cambodia's] culture," he added.

He stressed that "the preservation and restoration of Cambodian cultural heritage should be carried out by the Cambodians, for the Cambodians."

Towards that end, the Sophia Mission is deeply involved in the training of human resources. They selected 18 individuals and sent them to Sophia University to acquire doctorate and masters degrees. They are now senior officials of the government. The Mission has 'systematically raised awareness among Cambodian school children and villagers to take pride in their heritage and become its protectors and conservators.'

The board of trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) elected Yoshiaki Ishizawa to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of 'his selfless, steadfast service to the Cambodian people, his inspiring leadership in empowering Cambodians to be proud stewards of their heritage, and his wisdom in reminding us all that cultural monuments like the Angkor Wat are shared treasures whose preservation is thus, also shared global responsibility.' 


All photos by the author.