2004 Voices of Courage Awards
From left, honorees Maggy Barankitse, Win Myint Than, Hazel Reitz, acting director Ellen Jorgensen, Julia Kharashvili, Stella Umutoni, Partawmina Hashemee and Joyce Mends-Cole.
From left, honorees Maggy Barankitse, Win Myint Than, Hazel Reitz, acting director Ellen Jorgensen, Julia Kharashvili, Stella Umutoni, Partawmina Hashemee and Joyce Mends-Cole.
The Women’s Commission marked its 15th anniversary on May 13 with its annual Voices of Courage awards luncheon. More than 500 people attended the sold-out event, which was held at the new Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan. The luncheon raised more than $430,000.
The Commission honored 15 people - eight refugees and seven other individuals and institutions - and bestowed two posthumous awards, to Arthur Helton and Sergio Vieira de Mello, who lost their lives in the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad.
Featured honoree speakers were Stella Umutoni of Rwanda, now resettled in New York; Partawmina Hashemee, director of the Afghan Women’s Resource Center in Peshawar, Pakistan; Maggy Barankitse, who has organized five “villages” for Hutu and Tutsi children orphaned by the war in Burundi; and Dina Dublon of JPMorgan Chase.
Other honorees were Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Leonora Castaño Cano of Colombia, Julia Kharashvili of the Republic of Georgia, the Kosovar Youth Council, Ochora Emmanuel Lagedo of Uganda, Carolyn Makinson of MIT’s Center for International Studies, formerly of the Mellon Foundation, Joyce Mends-Cole, former UNHCR senior coordinator for refugee women/gender equality, the Nightingale-Bamford School, Hazel Reitz of the U.S. State Dept/Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and Dr. Win Myint Than of Burma.
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times gave the keynote speech, and spoke of his recent experiences in eastern Chad and Cambodia. Lesley Stahl of CBS 60 Minutes hosted the event. A short film tribute to Mary Diaz was shown, and the Women’s Commission’s Mary Diaz Campaign for Refugee Girls was officially launched.
To read more about each of the awardees, please click here.
Click here to read the speeches of Partawmina Hashemee, Maggy Barankitse and Dr. Win Myint Than.
Read a poem, Courage is Life, by Ochora Emmanuel Lagedo.