A MENTAL health advocate from Cambodia, a sight-saving humanitarian from Japan, a children’s rights crusader from the Philippines, and an anti-plastic pollution warrior from Indonesia have been announced as this year’s recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2022, Asia’s premier prize and highest honor which is also also widely regarded as the region’s Nobel Prize.
Sotheara Chhim, a Cambodian mental health advocate, who himself suffered mental anguish as a seven-year-old during the Khmer Rouge in 1975 after being separated from his kin and reunited only in 1979 when Phnom Penh was liberated, is known as a champion crusader in Cambodian traumatic disorder.
A 54-year-old Cambodian psychiatrist, Chhim was elected for “his calm courage in surmounting deep trauma to become his people’s healer; his transformative work amidst great need and seemingly insurmountable difficulties (in his country), and for showing that daily devotion to the best of one’s profession can itself be a form of greatness.”
Tadashi Hattori, a 58-year-old Japanese ophthalmologist, who has poured his resources and time in providing free eye surgeries in Vietnam, is described as “the embodiment of individual social responsibility.”
Hattori, who took up Medicine after vowing that nobody should be maltreated the way his late cancer-stricken father was when he was admitted to hospital, is being recognized for “his simple humanity and extraordinary generosity as a person and a professional; his skill and compassion in restoring the gift of sight to tens of thousands of people not his own; and the inspiration he has given, by his shining example, that one person can make a difference in helping kindness flourish in the world.”
Bernadette J. Madrid, a Filipino pediatrician, has been championing the Filipino child’s right to protection by creating safe spaces for abused children nationwide.
Coming from a family of pediatricians in Iloilo, Madrid assumed the directorship of PGH Child Protection Unity (the first such facility in the country) in 1997 and has since, pursued a multi-faceted career that put her at the helm of what has been praised as the best child abuse facility in Southeast Asia.
Madrid is recognized for “her unassuming and steadfast commitment to a noble and demanding advocacy; her leadership in running a multisectoral, multidisciplinary effort in child protection that is admired in Asia; and her competence and compassion in devoting herself to seeing that every abused child lives in a healing, safe, and nurturing society.”
The final awardee, Gary Bencheghib, is a young French filmmaker and anti-plastic pollution warrior who moved to Bali, Indonesia when he was only four years old, eventually realizing early in life that the fabled island is not entirely the picture-perfect paradise that it is known for. He, together with his sister and friends, initiated weekly beach clean-ups when he was 14, later producing multi-media contents on his dedicated mission to eradicate plastic pollution in Bali’s waterways, one river at a time.
Bencheghib is recognized for “emergent leadership” for “his inspiring fight against marine plastic pollution, an issue at once intensely local as well as global; his youthful energies in combining nature, adventure, video, and technology as weapons for social advocacy; and his creative, risk-taking passion that is truly a shining example for the youth and the world.”
“This year’s roster of Magsaysay Awardees have all challenged the invisible societal lines that cause separation and have drawn innovative and inspiring ones that build connections,” said Aurelio R. Montinola III, chairperson of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.
“The extraordinary work of the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees is testament to the borderless and limitless possibilities of Greatness of Spirit,” said Susan B. Afan, president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation during the virtual announcement of the winners yesterday coinciding with the late President Ramon Magsaysay’s 115th birth anniversary.
The awardees will each receive a certificate as well as a medallion bearing the likeness of the late President Ramon Magsaysay after whom the award was named, during the live formal presentation ceremonies at the Ramon Magsaysay Center in Manila on Nov. 30, 2022.
