Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Honor the Hands That Build Hope

The 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Awards were formally presented on November 7, 2025, at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila, Philippines, during the 67th Ramon Magsaysay Presentation Ceremony. The evening honored Fr. Flaviano Antonio L. Villanueva from the Philippines, the Foundation to Educate Girls Globally from India, and Shaahina Ali from the Maldives.

The awards recognize integrity, selfless service, and transformative leadership across communities in Asia.

As the beautiful, well-attended ceremony unfolded, this year’s laureates turned the spotlight away from themselves and toward the countless hands that make change possible, the girls, the divers, the volunteers, and the forgotten poor who keep hope alive.

In the glow of Asia’s most prestigious humanitarian stage, the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees stood not as solo heroes, but as voices for the many. Each one, Safeena Husain of India, Shaahina Ali of the Maldives, and Fr. Flavie Villanueva of the Philippines, used the moment not to claim glory, but to honor the people who walk beside them. Their words, humble yet powerful, reminded the world that change is never the work of one pair of hands alone.

For Safeena Husain, the journey began with little more than conviction. “I started to educate girls in my home with a computer screen in front of me and my infant daughter on my lap,” she recalled. From that small beginning, Educate Girls has grown into a movement reaching over 30,000 villages and helping more than two million girls return to school.

But as Husain took the stage, she made it clear the triumph was not hers to own. “This win is dedicated to the hard work of Educate Girls’ team members and field coordinators who go door to door to find every single girl who is not going to school,” she said. “They do it when it rains, even when the temperature hits 45 degrees centigrade. They climb mountains and cross rivers just to make sure every single home is visited and no girl is left behind.”

Her tribute extended to the 55,000 youth volunteers known as Team Balika, who embody the movement’s spirit through their motto: “My village, my problem, I am the solution.” To Husain, the award was for them, for the quiet, unseen army that builds futures one girl at a time.

From the highlands of India, the spotlight shifted to the turquoise waters of the Maldives, where Shaahina Ali has spent decades defending marine life from the frontlines of climate change. Her story, too, began with wonder. “I have always loved the ocean,” she said. “Diving for me has always been my passion, just being in the water, drifting reckless in the blue, is simply magical.”

That magic was shattered in 1998 when the El Niño phenomenon bleached over 90 percent of the Maldives’ coral reefs. “At first, I was fascinated,” Ali recalled. “The reef looked like a winter wonderland, white and beautiful. But a few months later, the color disappeared. The fish disappeared.” The experience became a turning point that transformed her from a diver into a conservationist.

Today, as the head of Parley Maldives, Ali works with communities, youth, and government partners to restore the reefs and fight marine pollution. Yet, like Husain, she accepted the award not for herself but for others. “This recognition is not mine alone,” she said. “It belongs to the community I work with, to my amazing team, and to all Maldivians who now feel hopeless about our ocean’s fate.”

And in the heart of Manila, Fr. Flavie Villanueva, SVD, turned his acceptance into a prayer for those forgotten by society, the homeless, the hungry, and the victims of extrajudicial killings. Through his Program Paghilom and Arnold Janssen Kalinga Foundation, Fr. Villanueva has worked to restore dignity to the destitute and help families heal from trauma inflicted by the drug war.

“I realize this honor was never about me,” he said, “but about the many lives and hands that gave it meaning, the homeless man who asked not for food, but for dignity; the mother who searched for the son taken by violence; and the volunteers who show up each day with open hearts.”

Receiving the award “not as a prize but as a voice for the voiceless,” he spoke of healing a wounded nation. “When injustice persists,” he said, “silence wounds the soul. To stop the bleeding, we need to start the healing, and to start the healing, we must continue asking the difficult questions.”

Different as their causes may be, educating girls, protecting oceans, and restoring human dignity, all three laureates share one conviction: that hope is not built by heroes but by communities. The girl who studies by candlelight, the diver who gathers coral fragments, the volunteer who serves the homeless, these are the true builders of a better world.