Indian-American girl chosen for Newsweek award

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Indian-American girl chosen for Newsweek award

New York, June 26 (IANS) Benita Singh, an Indian-American girl studying in Yale University, is among 15 people chosen by Newsweek magazine for its 'Giving Back Awards' in recognition to their 'bravery or generosity, genius or passion and devotion in helping others'.

Singh and Ruth DeGolia, both students of international studies, have been engaged in working for the rehabilitation of poor women artisans in a non-descript village on the Pacific coast of Guatemala since 2003.

They, and the 13 others were chosen from hundreds of nominations 'for imaginative approaches to difficult problems' and the magazine termed them as '15 people who make America great'.

Singh and DeGolia were still undergraduates when they found their destiny in San Alfonso village, the magazine said.

The duo was working on their theses when they visited the village, which was filled with women who had fled Guatemala during that country's brutal civil war in the 1980s.

After two years in refugee camps in Mexico, the women, many of them widowed by the fighting, had been repatriated here, where there was no work and no market for the exquisite woven and beaded handicrafts they produced.

'It was the first time I'd ever walked into an impoverished (Third World) community where people weren't asking me for money,' says Singh.

With a start-up grant from Echoing Green, a social entrepreneurship group, the two girls organised 15 to 18 cooperatives in remote villages where many inhabitants didn't even speak Spanish.

The members produced textiles on backstrap looms, hand-painted ceramics and jewellery for the export market.

They grossed about $75,000 last year in retail, online and catalogue sales.

This year, Singh and Ruth expect to earn $600,000 and are in talks with a major chain about carrying their hand-painted coffee mugs.

The money will be used to fund scholarships for children whose parents could not afford the $50 or 60 it costs to send a child to elementary school in the country.

'We have a very special place in our heart for young people with the audacity, the vision and the energy to see things through,' says Lara Galinsky, a vice-president of Echoing Green.

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt, CNN anchor Solidad O'Brien and writer Rick Warren are among the other winners.

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Indian-American girl chosen for Newsweek award