Human Rights Heroes Awarded at Annual Ceremony

Recognizing humanitarians for their extraordinary work

The elegant Teatro Gerolamo in the center of Milan was filled to capacity May 25 for the 11th annual Human Rights Hero Awards Gala. Stellar humanitarian accomplishments were acknowledged.

The program, produced by the Association of Human Rights and Tolerance, the Church of Scientology of Milan, and the United Planet Foundation NGO, was sponsored by the region of Lombardy, the league of Northern Italy consulates of South America and the Caribbean, and the Embassy of the Congo Democratic Republic also representing the African Union in Italy.

The Association acknowledged Human Rights “Ambassadors” for their contribution to the survival and well-being of their fellow man and presented special awards to three Human Rights Heroes for their outstanding humanitarian accomplishments.

Human Rights Heroes

Those presented Human Rights Hero awards were Dr. Cristina Fazzi, Gianfranco Ranieri, and the Rock No War Association and its president Giorgio Amadessi.

Dr. Fazzi is known as “the forest doctor.” A missionary who has lived in Zambia for the past 18 years, she first worked for the Italian Missionary Medical Union and then as medical director of the Mayo-Mwana Project where she serves 25,000 families in four slums in the urban outskirts of Ndola. She saw to the creation of a home for orphaned children in Ndola, a social center in Silangwa, a clinic for the care of malnourished children and pregnant women, and 13 stations in outlying areas that are reached on rotation by a mobile clinic delivering vaccinations and health checks.

Gianfranco Ranieri co-founded the nonprofit Karibuni organization to address poverty, health and education in Kenya. He has served as Karibuni president for the past 14 years. Ranieri has seen to the opening of schools serving some 5,000 students, and health clinics that see more than 500 patients each month. With Rotary of Appiano Gentile and the work of doctors Ela and Carlo Peverelli, he opened a school for 100 handicapped children. He created a clinic that is now a hospital for the care and monitoring of AIDS patients. He built nurseries, a maternity ward, a pediatric clinic and a secondary school, created 10 water wells providing drinking water to at least 6,000 people, a grinding mill serving neighboring farms and peasants, and a water tower serving local farms. He has funded 300 small businesses through micro-credit programs.

Rock No War president Giorgio Amadessi was inspired to create his nonprofit after performing a concert in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. The group performs in war zones and underdeveloped, poverty-stricken areas and carries out projects financed through their charity sports events and concerts. The group brings children living in impoverished countries to Italy for medical care unavailable at home; sponsored a dam at a hospital in Zimbabwe and a program for the adoption of orphans from Madagascar and Zimbabwe, centers for child victims of sexual exploitation in Cambodia and Laos, a hospital, a dialysis center, a home for blind children, a school and clinic in Madagascar, schools in Peru and Chile, a village for lepers in Ethiopia, a school and dormitory in Sri Lanka for deaf and dumb children, and a social cooperative for former child soldiers and girls who suffered violence during the war in Sierra Leone. After the earthquake in Emilia, Italy, Rock No War funded the construction of a new kindergarten and care for elderly and disabled victims of the earthquake.

The Association for Human Rights and Tolerance is a partner of Youth for Human Rights. The Church of Scientology and Scientologists support United for Human Rights and its program for young people, Youth for Human Rights, the world’s largest nongovernmental human rights education campaign, reaching out in 195 countries in 27 languages and embraced by 2,300 groups, organizations, activists and officials. Their support of the initiative is inspired by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s conviction that “It is vital that all thinking men urge upon their governments sweeping reforms in the field of human rights.”

For more information, visit the Scientology website or the Scientology TV Network.