Educate Girl : Winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2025

Why in the News? 

Educate Girls, an Indian non-profit organisation working for girls’ education in rural and remote areas, has been named as one of the three winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2025.

Key Points: Educate Girl 

About Educate Girls:

• Founded by Safeena Husain.
• Works in rural India to bring out-of-school and unprivileged girls into classrooms.
• Started in Rajasthan, now active in multiple states.
• Focus: girls’ enrolment, retention, and learning outcomes.
• Uses community volunteers (Team Balika & preraks).

Recognition:

• First Indian non-profit organisation ever to win the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
• Acknowledged for addressing gender injustice in education and creating a ripple effect in society.
• CEO Gayatri Nair Lobo called it a historic and humbling moment.

Other 2025 Winners:

• Shaahina Ali (Maldives) – environmental activist.
• Fr. Flaviano Antonio L. Villanueva (Philippines) – for human rights activism and opposing abuses during Duterte’s drug war.

About the Ramon Magsaysay Award

• Established: 1958 by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in memory of former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay (1917–1957).
• Objective: To honor “greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia.”
• Nickname: Known as the “Nobel Prize of Asia”.
• Categories (earlier): Government service, public service, community leadership, journalism/literature/creative arts, peace & international understanding, and emergent leadership (later merged into broader categories).
• First recipients (1958):

• Vinoba Bhave (India) – for the Bhoodan movement (land gift movement).
• Along with five others from Sri Lanka, China, Philippines, Japan.

• First Indian recipient: Vinoba Bhave (1958).
• Other famous Indian awardees:

• Jayaprakash Narayan (1965) – social reform & leadership.
• M.S. Subbulakshmi (1974) – Carnatic vocalist.
• Mother Teresa (1962) – for public service.
• Kiran Bedi (1994) – police reforms.
• Aruna Roy (2000) – RTI and grassroots activism.
• P. Sainath (2007) – rural journalism.
• Anshu Gupta (2015) – founder of Goonj NGO.
• Ravish Kumar (2019) – journalist.