| 2011 Opus Prize Recipients | Past Winners |
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Past Winners
Reach Education Action Programme (REAP) - Rev. Trevor Miranda, S.J.
Dr. Juliana Akinyi Otieno
Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos - Rev. William Wasson (deceased)
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2005 $100,000 Opus Prize Winner
Rev. Trevor Miranda, S.J.
Representing Reach Education Action Programme (REAP)
Only 56 percent of the people of India can read and write but if Rev. Trevor Miranda, S.J., has his way, the country will be 100 percent literate soon.
It was only three years ago that the Indian government formally recognized education as a fundamental human right. Father Miranda, on the other hand, has always known that school provides the straightest line to empowerment. He founded and runs a system of 450 informal schools known as the Reach Education Action Programme or REAP.
Located along one of India’s most populous and poverty-stricken transportation corridors, REAP reaches out to children who have dropped out of school, teaches them to read, and then returns them to the mainstream municipal school system. Since its inception in 1998, REAP has succeeded in leading thousands of children back to school or into vocational training programs.
REAP is always innovating and, over time, also has grown to include training programs for women to learn valuable professional and life skills and to develop the conviction that they can be agents of social change in their families and communities.
A door-to-door campaign
Because poverty pervades India, boys and girls are routinely taken out of school and forced into exploitative jobs. Father Miranda believes all young people belong in school. “Children,” he says, “need to be students not rag pickers.” With that philosophy, Father Miranda and his colleagues go door-to-door and work to convince parents to return their children to school. It is rarely an easy sell. It takes a special learning environment to win over parents who have begun to count on a child’s paycheck, however meager it may be. That’s why REAP endeavors “to give the best to the least.”
Through the REAP network of schools, students discover a world of opportunity that is a stark contrast to the factories and garbage dumps in which they otherwise would be forced to toil. REAP transforms the most dilapidated huts into vibrant classrooms, where students dressed in clean uniforms not only learn how to read and write but have fun doing it. The teachers, often REAP alumni themselves, are dedicated and energetic and they never hesitate to go where the need is greatest. When Father Miranda was asked to establish a learning center in what was essentially a garbage dump offering atrocious conditions for learning, he and his staff found a way to do so. They personify REAP’s philosophy that when it comes to serving the poor, no risk is too great to take. Every day, Father Miranda says, is a leap of faith, a leap they never stop taking.
