Legendary and multi-talented artist and social justice activist Harry Belafonte will receive the prestigious Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Lifetime Achievement and Academy Award-winning actress, humanitarian, and women’s advocate Geena Davis will be honored as the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year at the Third Annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards presented by the Yum! Brands Foundation.
Peace activist and crusader for women’s rights, Rose Mapendo will be honored with the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Gender Equality. And, Dr. Andrew Moore from Lexington, Kentucky, who founded Surgery on Sunday, will be named the 2015 Kentucky Humanitarian of the Year. Four-time Olympic Gold Medalist Janet Evans will be the emcee and host for the evening.
The Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards celebrate the greatness of people from around the world who are making differences in their communities and beyond. At the forefront of the event program will be the symbolic “passing of the torch” to the next generation. It is synergistic that 4-time Olympic Gold Medalist and 1996 Olympic Torchbearer Janet Evans will be reuniting with Muhammad Ali after so many years since she proudly passed the torch to Muhammad at the Opening Ceremonies of the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Six young people, 30 years and younger, are honored with an award for each of Muhammad’s Six Core Principles: Confidence, Conviction, Dedication, Giving, Respect, and Spirituality.
The Six Core Principle Awardees are:
Kyla LaPointe, age 24 of Bathurst, New Brunswick will be honored for her Confidence as a leading advocate for child rights nationally and internationally.
Hadiqa Bashir, only 13 years old, will be honored for her Conviction in dedicating her young life to the advocacy of women’s and girl’s rights against forced child marriage in Pakistan.
Christopher Ategeka, 31, will receive the honor for Dedication. Born and raised in rural Uganda, orphaned at age 7, was educated at the University of California and, in 2011, used his hard-won experience to start Rides for Lives to address health inequity in his home country.
Veronika Scott, age 26, is receiving the Giving Award for she enables others to become givers. She has created a sustainable program that addresses a root cause of homelessness — unemployment — by providing homeless women with jobs as seamstresses who create thermal, waterproof coats for other homeless individuals.
Sasha Fisher, age 26, will be honored for the Respect core principle. Sasha is the co-founder and executive director of Spark MicroGrants. Spark enables remote villages in east Africa to design and launch their own social impact projects through a six-month facilitated collective action process.
Tanyella Evans, 28, will be honored for her extraordinary sense of Spirituality. Driven by the philosophy that education is a basic human right, essential to prosperity and peace, Tanyella co-founded Library For All, an organization that offers a digital library platform to make quality educational resources available to individuals across the developing world.
For more information on the third annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards to be held September 19 at the Louisville Marriott Downtown, visit alicenter.org/awards.
