A Bangladeshi vaccine scientist and a microfinance pioneer from Pakistan were among the five recipients of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

The five awardees are:

1) Dr.Firdausi Qadri - A Bangladeshi scientist who has been instrumental in discovering vaccines that have saved millions of lives.

2) Muhammad Amjad Saqib - A microfinance pioneer who founded one of the largest microfinance institutions in Pakistan, servicing millions of families.

3) Roberto Ballon - A fisherman from Southern Philippines who has led a community in restoring their rich aquatic resources and their primary source of livelihood.

4) Steven Muncy - A humanitarian who has been helping the displaced refugees of Southeast Asia rebuild their lives. 

5) Watchdoc - A production house that ingeniously combines documentary filmmaking and alternative platforms to highlight underreported issues in Indonesia.

Ramon Magsaysay Award

• The Ramon Magsaysay Award is regarded as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize.

• Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia’s highest honour.

• It recognises greatness of spirit shown in selfless service to the people of Asia.

• It celebrates the memory and leadership example of the third Philippine president after whom the award is named, and is given every year to individuals or organisations.

• The Award was conceived to honor the greatness of spirit shown in service to the peoples of Asia — regardless of race, gender, or religion.

• The awardees are annually selected by the RMAF board of trustees.

• In over six decades, the Award has been bestowed on 340 outstanding individuals and organisations whose selfless service has offered successful solutions to some of the most intractable problems of human development.

• This year’s Magsaysay Award winners will each receive a certificate, a medallion bearing the likeness of the late President, and a cash prize. 

• They will be formally conferred the Magsaysay Award during a formal presentation ceremony to be held on November 28 at the Ramon Magsaysay Center in Manila.

• Since its establishment in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Awards have only been disrupted three times due to the 1970 financial crisis, the 1990 earthquake in Luzon, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Firdausi Qadri

Qadri, 70, is credited with developing affordable oral cholera vaccine and the typhoid conjugate vaccine for adults, children, and infants. Most of her work is focused in congested slum areas of developing countries. She is being recognised for her passion and life-long devotion to the scientific profession, her vision of building the human and physical infrastructure that will benefit the coming generation of Bangladeshi scientists, women scientists in particular, and her untiring contributions to vaccine development, advanced biotechnological therapeutics and critical research that has been saving millions of precious lives.

Muhammad Amjad Saqib

Pakistani development worker Muhammad Amjad Saqib, 64, has developed the “first-of-its-kind” interest-and-collateral-free microfinance programme — Akhuwat. It uses places of worship to disburse zero-interest loans, recording a phenomenal loan repayment rate of 99.9 per cent. Akhuwat has taken up a vast array of social support programmes in education, health services, clothes bank, anti-social discrimination and COVID-19 emergency aid. Saqib is being recognised for his intelligence and compassion that enabled him to create the largest microfinance institution in Pakistan, his inspiring belief that human goodness and solidarity will find ways to eradicate poverty, read the citation.

Steven Muncy

Steven Muncy, 64, from the US, is being recognised for his unshakable belief in the goodness of man that inspires in others the desire to serve, his life-long dedication to humanitarian work, refugee assistance, and peace building, and his unstinting pursuit of dignity, peace, and harmony for people in exceptionally difficult circumstances in Asia.

Roberto Ballon

Environmentalist Roberto Ballon, 53, from the Philippines, is being recognised for his inspiring determination in leading his fellow fisherfolk to revive a dying fishing industry by creating a sustainable marine environment for this generation and generations to come, and his shining example of how everyday acts of heroism can truly be extraordinary and transformative.

WatchDoc

Watchdoc, Indonesia, is lauded for its emerging leadership in its highly principled crusade for an independent media organisation, its energetic use of investigative journalism, documentary filmmaking, and digital technology in its effort to transform Indonesia's media landscape, and its commitment to a vision of the people themselves as makers of media and shapers of their own world.

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