Global Citizen Lifetime Achievement Karmaveer Puraskaar
June Connolly (2010-11)
June Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland and completed education in the U.K. She is a writer and a poet. She began volunteering for various causes since early childhood and grew up in post war Ireland and England facing many hardships. She has worked with social health helping run both a home for orphans as well as for alcoholics. She is an animal lover. After retirement she trained with the Woodgreen animal Shelter, U.K. and returned to India where she was supervising and monitoring care for countless animals that were sick, injured and abused from the streets. She can be seen feeding stray dogs on the streets, counseling people on how to care for their pets or solving animal related problems in the community. There are even times where she can be seen fighting for the rights of animals with overloaded bullock carts drivers at busy traffic lights. She is an inspiration for an individual who is 74 years and has dedicated her life to the welfare of the society.
Kumi Naidoo (2010-11)
Kumi Naidoo is the Greenpeace International Executive Director. He was born in South Africa and became involved in his country's liberation struggle at the age of 15. He was very active in neighbourhood organization, youth work and mass mobilizations against the apartheid regime. In 1990, Kumi returned to South Africa from England to work on the legalization of the African National Congress and directed the training of all electoral staff in the country. Kumi became the founding executive director of the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), an umbrella agency for the South African NGO community and organized the National Men's March Against Violence on Women and Children in 1997. Kumi was involved with the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, which is dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society throughout the world. He was the founding Chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), served as Chair of the civil society alliance 'Global Campaign for Climate Action' (GCCA) and also served as a board member of the Association for Women's Rights in Development.
Loralee Martha-Mae Lee (2010-11)
Loralee Martha-Mae Lee and David John Lee are residents of France. Loralee has written a book on their family story named 'Three Indian Orphans Touched by Destiny' which is a very inspirational story. This book highlights how international adoption brings human beings together across national boundaries. Through this, they wanted to show that the barriers to adoption are psychological and institutional, and that "being an international adoptive family" is really just being a family. This very global Canadian/British couple adopted three Indian orphans who have today become international Indians and true citizens of the world. Adopting a child is very clearly a citizen action, impacting only a few lives but doing so profoundly. On the global scale there are so many children needing adoption and so many childless parents yearning to adopt. They feel that if they could adopt a hundred children, they would. They believe that more than leaving things to governments and high profile charities, individual citizen actions can have far more powerful impact, not just on individual lives but on the relationship between nations and cultures.
David John Lee (2010-11)
David John Lee and Loralee Martha-Mae Lee are residents of France. This very global Canadian/British couple adopted three Indian orphans who have today become international Indians and true citizens of the world. Adopting a child is very clearly a citizen action, impacting only a few lives but doing so profoundly. On the global scale there are so many children needing adoption and so many childless parents yearning to adopt. They feel that if they could adopt a hundred children, they would. They believe that more than leaving things to governments and high profile charities, individual citizen actions can have far more powerful impact, not just on individual lives but on the relationship between nations and cultures. Loralee has written a book on their family story named 'Three Indian Orphans Touched by Destiny' which is a very inspirational story. This book highlights how international adoption brings human beings together across national boundaries. Through this, they wanted to show that the barriers to adoption are psychological and institutional, and that "being an international adoptive family" is really just being a family.
Global Indian Karmaveer Puraskaar
Angeli Kapoor Puri (2010-11)
Angeli Kapoor Puri is an artist, business entrepreneur, socialite and a social worker dedicated to several causes. She has made an impressionable mark in the field of Jewelry as an International designer. Artistic creativity is in her soul and as such she has made significant contributions in many fields. She is the promoter of Miss India Angel World contest and advocates women's rights. She is the founder of Angel Foundation which fights for the cause of female foeticide and crime against women. She believes that there is nothing more satisfying for her than saving the life of a girl child. The Angel foundation aims at not only saving the life of girl child but also helping her to live a life of dignity by being financially independent. She organizes various shows and exhibitions through which the money is raised for her foundation.
Kayzad Namdarian (2009-10)
Kayzad Namdarian’s story is both of exposure and donation towards action. He led an effort to expose a new-tech, new age approach to Civil Action through the Internet by starting an online Internet group. He has actively worked for various causes like World Hunger, notably Child Hunger, and has constantly been involved in spreading awareness about special charity websites. His efforts have been successful in igniting world’s sympathy towards the cause of Hunger in a new way and this is evident from the big charity contributions that have been a result of his work. Working with a mantra of ‘being aware, spreading awareness and then undertaking action’, he has helped people FEEL and done as much good for the society as he possibly can.
Mallika Dutt(2009-10)
Mallika Dutt has been a pioneer in the field of human rights for more than two decades. She has worked tirelessly to reduce global pandemics like violence against women and HIV/AIDS, and to remove obstacles to women’s full participation in society from the grassroots level to UN global public policy. While women’s rights have been a primary focus of her work, Mallika has also been at the forefront of advocating for immigrant rights, racial justice, and religion and peace, particularly in the aftermath of September 11th. For the last decade, Mallika’s commitment to advancing human rights has been implemented through her creative and visionary leadership of a new kind of non-profit organization, Breakthrough: building human rights culture, which she launched in 2000 with the path-breaking album and music video, Mann ke Manjeere, an album of women’s dreams. . In keeping with Mallika’s vision that men and women must be joint partners to end the pandemic of gender-based violence, Breakthrough’s Bell Bajao campaign calls on men and boys to take proactive action to intervene in situations of domestic violence. Mallika believes that an effective human rights approach is needed to uplift the voices of those who are marginalized and abused, and simultaneously involve all sectors of society to find meaningful solutions for lasting change.
Dr. Venkat Pulla (2008-09)
Dr Venkat Pulla has been a practicing social worker for the last three decades. A graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Community Development, he has taken social work into varied situations with his practice. Along with a number of his colleagues, his work in Strengths-Based Practices (SbPs) concentrates on the inherent strengths of individuals, families, groups and organisations deploying peoples' personal strengths to aid their recovery and their empowerment. Dr. Venkat Pulla has founded the Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practices, which innovates and advances a variety of training methodologies that actively interact and manage change. He is currently the Vice President of the Australian Association of Social Workers and is a member of the accreditation panel for schools of social work in Australia. To Venkat, there is only one perspective of human rights: 'That no one is ever abused, harmed and ever violated'
Dr. Sailesh Rao(2008-09)
Dr. Sailesh Rao is the Founder and President of Climate Healers, Inc., a non-profit corporation registered in California, USA. The primary goal of Climate Healers is to design and deploy meaningful and sustainable grassroots solutions to combat global climate change. Prior to founding Climate Healers, Dr. Rao, a serial entrepreneur, founded and led a number of successful ventures in the field of communications technologies. He was responsible for developing the world's first single-chip real-time MPEG video encoder, the IEEE 100BASET2 Ethernet standard, and the IEEE Gigabit Ethernet on Copper (1000BASE-T) standard that is currently deployed in millions of computers worldwide. Climate Healers has designed an incentive based scheme to drive the adoption of solar cookers in communities, providing solar cookers, LED lights and mobile phones at no cost to community members. Climate Healers is funded by patrons, who are typically individuals and organizations interested in solving the climate crisis with grassroots approaches that also have the potential to empower and emancipate the 2 Billion people at the bottom of the pyramid. Their contributions can be viewed as a voluntary carbon offset mechanism and are used exclusively for the project
Pavan Sukhdev (2007-08)
Pavan Sukhdev is the Managing Director in the Global Markets division of Deutsche Bank AG, based in London. He was deeply involved in the evolution of India's currency & interest rate markets from 1993 to 1998. He pioneered the introduction into India of an 'Overnight Index Swap' (OIS), now India's most liquid interest rate derivatives instrument. He has also been deeply committed to environmental protection in India and has pursued this interest through his contribution to various organizations including Green Indian States Trust (GIST), Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) and India Environment Trust.
Jitman Basnet (2009-10)
Jit Man Basnet is a prominent Human Rights activist in Nepal. He is presently working for Lawyers Forum for Human Rights as their General Secretary. Mr.Jit Man Basnet has never hesitated in even putting his life at risk for his work. He was abducted by Maoists in 2002 and arrested by Royal Nepal Army in 2004 but that was never a hindrance to what he believes in and works for. He has continuously worked towards creating awareness about human rights and civil rights and has always stood and raised his voice against social injustice. In his campaign against impunity and for justice, he even went on Hunger Strike for victims. He believes that social justice is for human beings and that it is our responsibility to preserve justice in the society.
Global Citizen Karmaveer Puraskaar
Claudia Ciesla (2009-10)
Claudia Ciesla is a German supermodel who has featured as a face for big names like Mercedes, CULT Magazine (Italy), Oktoberfest Munich, Times of India, The Telegraph (India) and many others. She certainly believes in multi tasking as she possesses various talents like singing, dancing, sports, athletics, music and martial arts. She was awarded the Brand Ambassadorship of Lovely Professional University. Apart from being a successful model, she is a person with a humane heart, who feels very strongly about social causes. Claudia is majorly supports Khushii (Kinship for Humanitarian, Social and Holistic Intervention in India), which is a national organization working for the enlistment of poor and destitute communities in both rural and urban areas in India.
Princess Francoise (2009-10)
Her highness, Princess Francoise is currently the CEO for the Heart for India Foundation – a foundation that feeds 1300 children everyday at a school for the poor at Namangalam, close to Chennai. The work at Namangalam School has progressed, with many projects and its success has seen it officially listed by the Government of Tamil Nadu as a “Model School” for India. Not just this, Namangalam School has now become an inspiration for the other schools of similar nature. From providing the basic amenities to children to improve their education standards, her organization has constantly worked towards supporting them. She has devised numerous charity projects under her Association of the friends of Romania that provides housing facilities for the orphaned and elderly. Along with her husband, she is now working towards supporting her charity and creative projects involving films, music and television.Lindsay Levin (2009-10)
Lindsay is founder and Managing Partner of Leaders' Quest and founder and Trustee of the Leaders’ Quest Foundation. Lindsay's long-standing interest in the impact of inspirational leadership, combined with her passion for development issues and for bringing together leaders from different disciplines and perspectives, led her to found Leaders' Quest in 2001. This foundation has a core mission to act as a catalyst for positive change in the world by inspiring, developing and connecting leaders who want to make a difference in their organisations, communities and the wider world. By working at grassroots level with global leaders, she endeavors to enable positive change in disadvantaged communities through innovative, transformative and action-oriented leadership development programmes. It exists to improve the quality of leadership and the way in which leaders have impact. Lindsay has a keen interest in international development; she is an active supporter of several NGOs including Oxfam, Action aid and a number of Community Based Organizations in Asia and Africa. Lindsay is also a Trustee of NEF (the New Economics Foundation) a “think-and-do tank” working on issues of social justice, environmental sustainability and collective well-being.
Global Artistes 4 Change Karmaveer Puraskaar
Saskia Laroo (2010-11)
Saskia Laroo was born in Amsterdam and is a musician. She feels her music symbolizes Social Justice and Citizen Action because she combines music styles from different cultures with and for people of various age and background (social, religious, political) to create common grounds so that an environment of understanding, communication, acceptation and peace for each other's culture can be created. She strongly feels that all of us should try and find ways and means of helping each other- not just our neighbors or family members, but every person we meet in our daily life. She believes that there is a purpose in her art, and music would definitely help in promoting peace and harmony in the world. Her shows in India were a mix of regional music from the places she visited. She has also tried to fight against terrorism through a new concept called 'Jazz for Peace.' After the Mumbai terrorist attacks and warnings, she came to Mumbai to perform as defiance to terrorism. She performed across India, helping panicky citizens to overcome their fear and apprehension. She feels that music created together by all musicians of the world, in unison reflecting different cultures, can serve as a small but effective tool towards erasing the wrongs and doing the right things.