LMU GPI had the privilege to attend the Hilton Humanitarian Prize Symposium and Award Ceremony on October 18, 2019. The Hilton Foundation awarded refugee rehabilitation agency METAdrasi with the 2019 prize. Tia Carr, Brittany Benjamin Amante, and Declan Tomlinson share their reflections on the event.
Tia Carr, Undergraduate Research Fellow
At the Hilton Prize ceremony, I had the privilege of hearing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speak. Adichie has authored both award-winning novels and one of the most-viewed Ted Talks of all time, “The Danger of a Single Story.” She was born and raised in Nigeria, and speaks to the expectations placed upon her both as a woman and as an African, components of her identity she became acutely aware of while studying in America. In her Ted Talk and at the Hilton Prize ceremony, Adichie detailed how the single story of Africa as a place of war and poverty lead to Americans automatically assuming she would be uneducated, and ignorant to popular culture. She recounted numerous instances of this ignorance, like when her college roommate was shocked that she listened to Mariah Carey and not tribal music, and even having a professor tell her that her writing was “not authentically African,” because it was centered on a middle-class family much like her own, rather than a dirt-poor one.
The winner of this year’s humanitarian prize, METAdrasi, takes this message of looking beyond a single story to heart. They make it their mission to both provide basic necessities to refugees, but also to recognize that each refugee they help has a collection of experiences, hopes and dreams just like any other person. Through education, training and lots of encouragement, METAdrasi helps them actualize their dreams—a feat impossible had they been singularly regarded as just a refugee.
Hearing Adichie speak was an important reminder to keep our minds open. Every global issue has a multiplicity of causes, effects, and people entangled within it, and requires us to see them as changing and able to be influenced. If we fall into the trap of the single story, we fall into apathy.
Brittany Benjamin Amante, Graduate Research Fellow
Let me ask you a question: “What breaks your heart?”
Tererai Trent, author of “The Awakened Woman,” opened the 2019 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Symposium, presenting this same question to the audience, and it unequivocally set the stage for the entire day. Throughout the symposium, we heard from numerous Change Makers moved to action through a broken heart. Broken hearted from climate change, ageism, racism and the plight of refugees, Change Makers showed the impact of one individual or small group in bettering the world.
I know I speak for myself and the whole GPI organization in saying it was an honor to be invited to the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium. It was an electrifying day, which left me mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. Mostly, I was inspired. I was inspired by the speakers and guests who successfully change the world for the better every day. Oprah Winfrey identified Tererai as her all-time favorite guest, and after hearing her speak, it’s no secret why. Tererai commanded the stage with her presence, humor and booming voice. By sharing her story, she reminded me what breaks my own heart: issues of gender equity and representation. She renewed the vigor within me to pursue my own dreams of using art to heal women’s wounds of trauma. Yet, she instilled a new idea within my heart – an idea that my dreams have greater meaning when tied to the betterment of my own community. That’s what makes life truly meaningful.
So I ask again, “What breaks your heart?” And how does it dictate how you are living your life now?
Declan Tomlinson, Undergraduate Research Fellow
Picture after picture, I was humbled as the situation in Yemen unfolded before my eyes. Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Tyler Hicks shared his most notable work during his journalist campaign in Yemen, each composition joining unspeakable carnage with a resilient glimmer of humanity. Hicks, using his photographic prowess, demonstrated a snapshot of the unfathomable life amid the atrocities of the Yemeni crisis. Yet throughout these pictures, Hicks captures his subjects in such dignifying and humanizing ways. I was taken out of the Hilton Ballroom and into the heart of Yemen, each picture creating a sense of intimacy with humans on the other side of the globe. I was humbled seeing their reality.
Since 2015, Yemeni civilians have been caught in a deadly civil war between a Houthi insurgency and Yemeni government in the south of Yemen. This civil war had become a proxy for greater international conflict, accompanied by greater spheres of influence. However, behind these political motives lies the truth of the human condition in Yemen, and Tyler Hicks has broken the veil. It is moving to see an idea manifested in the form of a picture, giving a much more humbling context to human rights affairs. Hicks’ photos take no political sides, yet still manage to serve as a call to remember the real human costs of war, and to act to help those caught in the crossfire.
METAdrasi, this year’s Hilton Humanitarian Prize winner, has taken this call to action. METAdrasi is an organization that aids Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees fleeing to Greece. Greece is seen as the foothold into a new world, one where the persecuted, threatened and oppressed can potentially be free. However, this gateway to freedom is overcrowded, dangerous, and often more abhorrent than the situations they left. METAdrasi has stepped in to meet the needs of people cast away from every other society, answering the call back to humanity. METAdrasi received their award because they were moved by pictures, by the humanizing stories of people. They continue to fight for those who have been forgotten.