The Hindu : National : NRI student bags <I>Newsweek </I>award

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Tuesday, Jun 27, 2006

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NRI student bags Newsweek award

New York: Indian-American Benita Singh, a Yale University student, is among 15 U.S. citizens and organisations chosen by Newsweek magazine for its annual `Giving Back Awards' — honouring those who use fame, fortune and heart to devote themselves to helping others.

Ms. Benita and her partner Ruth DeGolia have been chosen for their work among women, especially widows, in Guatemala. The 15 awardees were chosen from among hundreds of nominations.

The citation says Ms. Benita and Ms. Ruth were still undergraduates in the summer of 2003 when they found their destiny in the village of San Alfonso in Guatemala.

The two, international studies majors at Yale, were working on their senior theses when they visited the village, filled with women who had fled Guatemala during a brutal civil war in the 1980s.

After two years in refugee camps in Mexico, the women, many of them widowed by the fighting, had been repatriated to their country where there was no work and no market for the exquisite woven and beaded handicraft they produced.

But the women weren't beggars. It was, says Benita, ``the first time I'd ever walked into an impoverished community where people weren't asking me for money.'' — PTI

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