Media Coverage

$1 Million Humanitarian Award Announced in Seattle
International Herald Tribune
Associated Press
November 19, 2008

SEATTLE: A woman who has provided a safe haven for children in Burundi for the past 15 years is the winner of a $1 million faith-based humanitarian award from the Opus Prize Foundation.

The fifth-annual Opus Prize was announced Tuesday at Seattle University. The Minneapolis-based foundation works with a university each year to research nominees who work to solve persistent social problems.

This year's winner is Marguerite Barankitse, whose organization has set up 500 small houses for orphans of ethnic violence in Burundi. The program is now being copied in Rwanda and the Congo.

The foundation also announced two $100,000 winners: Michael Woodard, who has helped people move from poverty to self-sufficiency in Nicaragua; and Krishnammal Jagannathan, who has worked for land rights and self-empowerment for women in India over the past 40 years.