Humble servants
Literacy, a child’s health, the comfort of family, a safe place to sleep. The simplest things are beyond the reach of most of the world’s poorest people.
Marquette in the World
This year’s Opus Prize honorees don’t wring their hands and wish that something could be done. They understand that one person has the power to do much. For Rev. Trevor Miranda, S.J., that meant founding a network of literacy centers to serve India’s poorest children. For Dr. Juliana Akinyi Otieno, it meant setting up practice in Kisumu, Kenya, where two of every 10 children die before the age of 5. For Rev. William Wasson, it meant establishing orphanages for homeless children in Latin America and the Caribbean. All three credit an abiding faith and fierce determination for their ability to help others. Their faith-based entrepreneurship was recognized at an unforgettable celebration on Marquette’s campus that culminated with presentation of the $1 million Opus Prize.
What does it take to create a charitable organization worthy of the Opus Prize? — It takes a call.
Father Miranda was not terribly surprised when representatives from the U.S.-based Opus Prize Foundation asked for permission to visit some of his schools. It’s fairly common to receive visits from foundations scouting for new trends in philanthropy. But Father Miranda was speechless to discover that his network of schools, Reach Education Action Programme, had been selected as the 2005 Opus Prize winner and recipient of the $1 million award. The Opus Prize Foundation also made awards of $100,000 each to support the work of Otieno and Father Wasson.
In the mid-1990s, Father Miranda was treasurer of the Society of Jesus in Mumbai, India, when he felt a call to the streets of that populous city (formerly known as Bombay).
“I saw that literacy is the key to social independence for homeless children and settlers living in illegal slums,” he says. “Yet many of these people living at the margin of survival have little time to worry about schooling. They are understandably preoccupied with more pressing questions: Will my hut be there when I return home, or will it be demolished? Where will my next meal come from? Worse, large numbers of children are forced to work, often in hazardous occupations. Getting these children out of child labor and into school is difficult to do. The extent of this problem is so large that I realized from the start that we needed to have a mass impact.”
Father Miranda asked his superiors to release him from his administrative duties and allow him to open literacy centers. From a modest start of 15 centers, REAP now operates nearly 500 centers in city slums, suburbs and rural areas. Classes for the poor take place in a temple, home, even on the pavement. Tailored programs reach children in difficult living conditions, school children struggling academically, and marginalized youths and adults.
With the investment of the $1 million Opus Prize money, REAP will be able to add as many as 200 new literacy centers and reach 6,000 more children.
After she earned a medical degree, Dr. Otieno felt called to return to her hometown, Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya — and one of the poorest.
As one of only two pediatricians in the city of 300,000, she says: “I have no one to consult with. I have to rely on my brain, my hands and my eyes. And God.”
In Kenya, two of every 10 children die before the age of five, and 23 percent of pregnant women are HIV positive. Every day, sick children and their families walk to Otieno’s clinic to be treated for diseases ranging from malaria to tuberculosis. Otieno, who cares for eight children at home (three of them her own children, and five nieces and nephews) sees up to 50 children a day before continuing to see patients after hours, working from her two-bedroom house.
“God makes me whole,” she says of her superhuman schedule. “It is only by the grace of God that I can heal people.”
Father William Wasson heard the call when a teenager was caught breaking into the poor box of his church in Cuernavaca to steal 500 pesos. Father Wasson declined to press charges — instead he asked the judge for custody of the boy. Within a week, the judge had placed eight more boys in the priest’s care. Today, 51 years later, Father Wasson and his colleagues have founded orphanages in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries, Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, (Our Little Brothers and Sisters), for abandoned and abused children.
At NPH, children get unconditional love and security. In return, NPH requires the children to work hard, take responsibility for their lives, and share what they have. NPH strives to be a self-sustaining community that includes a rigorous school system, farm operations and all the other facets that go into making lives normal, productive and fulfilling. In environments where 1 percent of children are college bound, 20 percent of NPH’s kids receive a university education.
The Opus Prize was established by the Opus Corp., a Minneapolis-area commercial real estate development company, to recognize people who use creativity, ambition and faith to conquer the causes at the root of poverty, illiteracy, hunger, disease and injustice in their communities.
The Opus Prize Foundation has chosen to work with selected Catholic universities to identify candidates for the annual Opus Prize. During a discreet, yearlong process, anonymous “spotters” around the world nominate people whose work exemplifies successful faith-based entrepreneurship at work. Then a panel of jurors named by the university chooses the year’s awards recipients. One recipient receives the Opus Prize and two receive $100,000 awards to invest in their charitable work.
The Opus Prize Foundation asked Marquette University to administer the 2005 Opus Prize. Students Nicole Hertel, Arts and Sciences senior, Conor Sweeney, Arts and Sciences junior, and Lisa Hensch, Business Administration senior, were invited to accompany representatives of the foundation when they visited REAP in India, Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos in Mexico and Dr. Otieno’s practice in Kenya. In addition to this unique student involvement, the Opus Prize Foundation encouraged Marquette to integrate the Opus Prize recognition into the year’s curriculum, giving students time to reflect upon and embrace the life work to which God is calling them.
“It is a blessing for all of us to find ourselves in the company of such good and caring human beings as Father Cleary, Dr. Otieno and Father Miranda,” said President Robert Wild, S.J., at the Opus Prize celebration. “We admire them for the strength of their faith. We can’t help but be impressed by their optimism in the face of all the human tragedy they encounter. We thank God for their compassionate hearts, and draw inspiration from their self-sacrificing and imaginative service to those who are most in need.
“Our involvement this year in the Opus Prize has actually served as a catalytic force on this campus. Not only has it served as an inducement to us to reflect more deeply on the question of how we might better carry out our responsibility for graduating men and women for others, men and women with a strong concern for social justice, but also, inspired by the deep and faith-filled commitment of the honorees and the vision of the Opus Prize Foundation, we are now in the midst of a yearlong dialogue entitled Human Dignity, Human Rights: A Call to Service and have begun seriously to consider the establishment here at Marquette of a center for human rights.”
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There are many winners