The Greatest Composer

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

"Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived.

I would bare my head and kneel at his grave"
~L.v. Beethoven (1824)~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

He was born Georg Friederich Händel on 23 February 1685 in Halle, Germany, son of a barber-surgeon who intended him for the law. At first he practised music clandestinely, but his father was encouraged to allow him to study and he became a pupil of Zachow, the principal organist in Halle. When he was 17 he was appointed organist of the Calvinist Cathedral, but a year later he left for Hamburg. There he played the violin and harpsichord in the opera house, where his Almira was given at the beginning of 1705, soon followed by his Nero.

The next year he accepted an invitation to Italy, where he spent more than three years, in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. He had operas or other dramatic works given in all these cities (oratorios in Rome, including La resurrezione) and, writing many Italian cantatas, perfected his technique in setting Italian words for the human voice. In Rome he also composed some Latin church music. He left Italy early in 1710 and went to Hanover, where he was appointed Kapellmeister to the elector. But he at once took leave to take up an invitation to London, where his opera Rinaldo was produced early in 1711. Back in Hanover, he applied for a second leave and returned to London in autumn 1712. Four more operas followed in 1712-15, with mixed success; he also wrote music for the church and for court and was awarded a royal pension. In 1716 he may have visited Germany (where possibly he set Brockes's Passion text); it was probably the next year that he wrote the Water Music to serenade George I at a river-party on the Thames.

In 1717 he entered the service of the Earl of Carnarvon (soon to be Duke of Chandos) at Edgware, near London, where he wrote 11 anthems and two dramatic works, the evergreen Acis and Galatea and Esther, for the modest band of singers and players retained there.
In 1718-19 a group of noblemen tried to put Italian opera in London on a firmer footing, and launched a company with royal patronage, the Royal Academy of Music; Handel, appointed musical director, went to Germany, visiting Dresden and poaching several singers for the Academy, which opened in April 1720. Handel's Radamisto was the second opera and it inaugurated a noble series over the ensuing years including Ottone, Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda, Tamerlano and Admeto. Works by Bononcini (seen by some as a rival to Handel) and others were given too, with success at least equal to Handel's, by a company with some of the finest singers in Europe, notably the castrato Senesino and the soprano Cuzzoni. But public support was variable and the financial basis insecure, and in 1728 the venture collapsed.

The previous year Handel, who had been appointed a composer to the Chapel Royal in 1723, had composed four anthems for the coronation of George II and had taken British naturalization.
Opera remained his central interest, and with the Academy impresario, Heidegger, he hired the King's Theatre and (after a journey to Italy and Germany to engage fresh singers) embarked on a five-year series of seasons starting in late 1729. Success was mixed. In 1732 Esther was given at a London musical society by friends of Handel's, then by a rival group in public; Handel prepared to put it on at the King's Theatre, but the Bishop of London banned a stage version of a biblical work. He then put on Acis, also in response to a rival venture. The next summer he was invited to Oxford and wrote an oratorio, Athalia, for performance at the Sheldonian Theatre. Meanwhile, a second opera company ('Opera of the Nobility', including Senesino) had been set up in competition with Handel's and the two competed for audiences over the next four seasons before both failed. This period drew from Handel, however, such operas as Orlando and two with ballet, Ariodante and Alcina, among his finest scores.

During the rest of the 1730s Handel moved between Italian opera and the English forms, oratorio, ode and the like, unsure of his future commercially and artistically. After a joumey to Dublin in 1741-2, where Messiah had its premiere (in aid of charities), he put opera behind him and for most of the remainder of his life gave oratorio performances, mostly at the new Covent Garden theatre, usually at or close to the Lent season. The Old Testament provided the basis for most of them (Samson, Belshazar, Joseph. Joshua, Solomon, for example), but he sometimes experimented, turning to classical mythology (Semele, Hercules) or Christian history (Theodora), with little public success. All these works, along with such earlier ones as Acis and his two Cecilian odes (to Dryden words), were performed in concert form in English. At these performances he usually played in the interval a concerto on the organ (a newly invented musical genre) or directed a concerto grosso (his op.6, a set of 12, published in 1740, represents his finest achievement in the form).

During his last decade he gave regular performances of Messiah, usually with about 16 singers and an orchestra of about 40, in aid of the Foundling Hospital. In 1749 he wrote a suite for wind instruments (with optional strings) for performance in Green Park to accompany the Royal Fireworks celebrating the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. His last oratorio, composed as he grew blind, was Jephtha (1752); The Triumph of Time and Truth (1757) is largely composed of earlier material. Handel was very economical in the re-use of his ideas; at many times in his life he also drew heavily on the music of others (though generally avoiding detection) - such 'borrowings' may be of anything from a brief motif to entire movements, sometimes as they stood but more often accommodated to his own style.

Handel died in 1759 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, recognized in England and by many in Germany as the greatest composer of his day. The wide range of expression at his command is shown not only in the operas, with their rich and varied arias, but also in the form he created, the English oratorio, where it is applied to the fates of nations as well as individuals. He had a vivid sense of drama. But above all he had a resource and originality of invention, to be seen in the extraordinary variety of music in the op.6 concertos, for example, in which melodic beauty, boldness and humour all play a part, that place him and J.S. Bach as the supreme masters of the Baroque era in music.

~The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music~

Holocaust Survivors' Storyteller

Elie Wiesel

Nobel Prize for Peace

"Always Question Those Who Are Certain
of What Tey Are Saying"

~Elie Wiesel~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Elie Wiesel was born in the small town of Sighet in Transylvania on September 30, 1928, where people of different languages and religions have lived side by side for centuries, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in bitter conflict. The region was long claimed by both Hungary and Romania, in the 20th century, it changed hands repeatedly, a hostage to the fortunes of war. Elie Wiesel grew up in the close-knit Jewish community of Sighet. While the family spoke Yiddish at home, they read newspapers and conducted their grocery business in German, Hungarian or Romanian as the occasion demanded. Ukrainian, Russian and other languages were also widely spoken in the town. Elie began religious studies in classical Hebrew almost as soon as he could speak. The young boy's life centered entirely on his religious studies. He loved the mystical tradition and folk tales of the Hassidic sect of Judaism, to which his mother's family belonged. His father, though religious, encouraged the boy to study the modern Hebrew language and concentrate on his secular studies.

The first years of World War II left Sighet relatively untouched. Although the village changed hands from Romania to Hungary, the Wiesel family believed they were safe from the persecutions suffered by Jews in Germany and Poland. The secure world of Wiesel's childhood ended abruptly with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944. The Jewish inhabitants of the village were deported en masse to concentration camps in Poland. The 15 year-old boy was separated from his mother and sister immediately on arrival in Auschwitz. He never saw them again. He managed to remain with his father for the next year as they were worked almost to death, starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow, without food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel's father succumbed to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure.

After the war, the teenaged Wiesel found asylum in France, where he learned for the first time that his two older sisters had survived the war. Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew. He became a professional journalist, writing for newspapers in both France and Israel.
For ten years, he observed a self-imposed vow of silence and wrote nothing about his wartime experience. In 1955, at the urging of the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, he set down his memories in Yiddish, in a 900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). The book was first published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Wiesel compressed the work into a 127-page French adaptation, La Nuit (Night), but several years passed before he was able to find a publisher for the French or English versions of the work. Even after Wiesel found publishers for the French and English translations, the book sold few copies.

In 1956, while he was in New York covering the United Nations, Elie Wiesel was struck by a taxi cab. His injuries confined him to a wheelchair for almost a year. Unable to renew the French document which had allowed him to travel as a "stateless" person, Wiesel applied successfully for American citizenship. Once he recovered, he remained in New York and became a feature writer for the Yiddish-language newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward (Der forverts ). Wiesel continued to write books in French, including the semi-autobiographical novels L'Aube (Dawn), and Le Jour (translated as The Accident ). In his novel La Ville de la Chance (translated as The Town Beyond the Wall ), Wiesel imagined a return to his home town, a journey he did not undertake in life until after the book was published.

As these and other books began to win him an international reputation, Wiesel took an increasing interest in the plight of persecuted Jews in the Soviet Union. He first traveled to the USSR in 1965 and reported on his travels in The Jews of Silence. His 1968 account of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors appeared in English as A Beggar In Jerusalem . In time, Wiesel was able to use his fame to plead for justice for oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, Biafra and Bangladesh.
He has written plays including Zalmen, or the Madness of God and The Trial of God (Le Proces de Shamgorod ). His other novels include The Gates of the Forest, The Oath, The Testament, and The Fifth Son. His essays and short stories have been collected in the volumes Legends of Our Time, One Generation After, and A Jew Today. Wiesel still writes his books in French, his wife Marion often collaborates with him on their English translation. Since 1976, he has been Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University. He makes his home in New York City with his wife and their son, Elisha.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom and, in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace. The English translation of his memoirs was published in 1995 as All Rivers Run to the Sea. A second volume of memoirs, And the Sea is Never Full, appeared in 2000. Over the years, Wiesel has spoken out on behalf of the victims of genocide and oppression all over the world, from Bosnia to Darfur. Although he is now known to millions for his human rights activism, he has by no means abandoned the art of fiction. His latest novel is A Mad Desire to Dance (2009).

This page last revised on Mar 02, 2009 08:55 PDT

~From Academy of Achievement~

First Lady of Civil Rigths

Coretta Scott King
Pioneer of Civil Rights

"When You Are Willing To Make

Sacrifices for A Great Cause,

You Will Never Be Alone"
~Coretta Scott King~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Coretta Scott was born in Heiberger on April 27, 1927, Alabama and raised on the farm of her parents Bernice McMurry Scott, and Obadiah Scott, in Perry County, Alabama. She was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. Young Coretta excelled at her studies, particularly music, and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

As an undergraduate, she took an active interest in the nascent civil rights movement; she joined the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the college's Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. She graduated from Antioch with a B.A. in music and education and won a scholarship to study concert singing at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. In Boston she met a young theology student, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her life was changed forever. They were married on June 18, 1953, in a ceremony conducted by the groom's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Coretta Scott King completed her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory and the young couple moved in September 1954 to Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King Jr. had accepted an appointment as Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

They were soon caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern civil rights movement. When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was arrested for violating the city's ordinances giving white passengers preferential treatment in public conveyances. The black citizens of Montgomery organized immediately in defense of Mrs. Parks, and under Martin Luther King's leadership organized a boycott of the city's buses. The Montgomery bus boycott drew the attention of the world to the continued injustice of segregation in the United States, and led to court decisions striking down all local ordinances separating the races in public transit.

Dr. King's eloquent advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience soon made him the most recognizable face of the civil rights movement, and he was called on to lead marches in city after city, with Mrs. King at his side, inspiring the citizens, black and white, to defy the segregation laws. The visibility of Dr. King's leadership attracted fierce opposition from the supporters of institutionalized racism. In 1956, white supremacists bombed the King family home in Montgomery. Mrs. King and the couple's first child narrowly escaped injury.
The Kings had four children in all: Yolanda Denise; Martin Luther, III; Dexter Scott; and Bernice Albertine. Although the demands of raising a family had caused Mrs. King to retire from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to the service of the cause. She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement. Over the next few years, Mrs. King staged Freedom Concerts in some of America's most distinguished concert venues, as fundraisers for the organization her husband had founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King's fame spread beyond the United States, and he was increasingly seen not only as a leader of the American civil rights movement, but as the symbol of an international struggle for human liberation from racism, colonialism and all forms of oppression and discrimination. In 1957, Dr. King and Mrs. King journeyed to Africa to celebrate the independence of Ghana. In 1959, they made a pilgrimage to India to honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence had inspired them. Dr. King's leadership of the movement for human rights was recognized on the international stage when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband when he traveled to Oslo, Norway to accept the Prize.

In the 1960s, Dr. King broadened his message and his activism to embrace causes of international peace and economic justice. Mrs. King found herself in increasing demand as a public speaker. She became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. Mrs. King became a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against United States intervention in the Vietnam War.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on fulfilling her husband's work by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband's life and dream. Years of planning, fundraising and lobbying, lay ahead, but Mrs. King would not be deterred, nor did she neglect direct involvement in the causes her husband had championed. In 1969, Coretta Scott King published the first volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1970s, Mrs. King maintained her husband's commitment to the cause of economic justice. In 1974 she formed the Full Employment Action Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women's rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity; Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council.

In 1981, The King Center, the first institution built in memory of an African American leader, opened to the public. The Center is housed in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King's tomb in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of a 23-acre national historic site that also includes Dr. King's birthplace and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father both preached. The King Center Library and Archives houses the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era. The Center receives over one million visitors a year, and has trained tens of thousands of students, teachers, community leaders and administrators in Dr. King's philosophy and strategy of nonviolence through seminars, workshops and training programs.

Mrs. King continued to serve the cause of justice and human rights; her travels took her throughout the world on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1983, she marked the 20th Anniversary of the historic March on Washington, by leading a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in the largest demonstration the capital city had seen up to that time.
Mrs. King led the successful campaign to establish Dr. King's birthday, January 15, as a national holiday in the United States. By an Act of Congress, the first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986. Dr. King's birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100 countries. Mrs. King was invited by President Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985 Mrs. King and three of her children were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., for protesting against that country's apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Ten years later, she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa.

After 27 years at the helm of The King Center, Mrs. King turned over leadership of the Center to her son, Dexter Scott King, in 1995. She remained active in the causes of racial and economic justice, and in her remaining years devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and curbing gun violence. Although she died in 2006 at the age of 78, she remains an inspirational figure to men and women around the world.

This page last revised on Jan 07, 2008 09:49 PDT

~From Academy of Achievement~

From Beekeeper To World Explorer

Sir Edmund Hillary
Conqueror of Mt. Everest

"We Didn't Know If It was Humanly Possible

To Reach the Top of Mt. Everest"
~Sir Edmund Hillary~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Sir Edmund Hillary was born on July 20, 1919 and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. It was in New Zealand that he became interested in mountain climbing. Although he made his living as a beekeeper, he climbed mountains in New Zealand, then in the Alps, and finally in the Himalayas, where he climbed 11 different peaks of over 20,000 feet. By this time, Hillary was ready to confront the world's highest mountain. Mt. Everest lies between Tibet and Nepal. Between 1920 and 1952, seven major expeditions had failed to reach the summit. In 1924, the famous mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory had perished in the attempt. In 1952, a team of Swiss climbers had been forced to turn back after reaching the south peak, only 1000 feet from the summit.

Edmund Hillary joined in Everest reconnaissance expeditions in 1951 and again in 1952. These exploits brought Hillary to the attention of Sir John Hunt, leader of an expedition sponsored by the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographic Society to make the assault on Everest in 1953. The expedition reached the South Peak on May, but all but two of the climbers who had come this far were forced to turn back by exhaustion at the high altitude. At last, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a native Nepalese climber who had participated in five previous Everest trips, were the only members of the party able to make the final assault on the summit. At 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level, the highest spot on earth. As remarkable as the feat of reaching the summit was the treacherous climb back down the peak.

By coincidence, the conquest of Everest was announced to the British public on the eve of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The triumph of a British-led expedition combined with the inauguration of the young Queen did much to restore the confidence of a nation weary from long years of wartime hardship and postwar shortages. Edmund Hillary returned to Britain with the other climbers and was knighted by the Queen.
Now world famous, Sir Edmund Hillary turned to Antarctic exploration and led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958. In 1958 he participated in the first mechanized expedition to the South Pole. Hillary went on to organize further mountain-climbing expeditions but, as the years passed, he became more and more concerned with the welfare of the Nepalese people. In the 1960s, he returned to Nepal, to aid in the development of the society, building clinics, hospitals and 17 schools.

To facilitate these projects, two airstrips were built. These airstrips had the unforeseen consequence of bringing more tourists and would-be mountain climbers to the remote region. The Nepalese cut down ever more of their forests to provide fuel for the mountaineers. Edmund Hillary became concerned about the degradation of the environment of the Himalayas and persuaded the Nepalese government to pass laws protecting the forest and to declare the area around Everest a National Park. The Nepalese could not afford to fund this project themselves and had no experience in park management. Hillary used his great prestige to persuade the government of New Zealand to provide the necessary aid.

Immediately after the successful Everest expedition, Hillary and Sir John Hunt published their account of the expedition, The Ascent of Everest. The book was published in the U.S as The Conquest of Everest. Sir Edmund Hillary's autobiography Nothing Venture, Nothing Win was published in 1975. In 1979, he published From the Ocean to the Sky, an account of his 1977 expedition on the Ganges river from its mouth to its source in the Himalayas. Sir Edmund's life was darkened by the loss of his wife and daughter in a plane crash in 1975. He continued to occupy himself with environmental causes and humanitarian work on the behalf of the Nepalese people for the rest of his life. He died at home in New Zealand at the age of 88, mourned by his countrymen and by legions of admirers around the world.

This page last revised on Jan 28, 2008 13:24 PDT
~From Academy of Achievement~

Classics of Twentieth-Century American Literature

Ernest Gaines
A Master of The Novel

"Without Love for My Fellow Man and Respect for Nature,
To Me, Life Is An Obscenity"
~Ernest Gaines~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Ernest James Gaines was born on the River Lake Plantation near the small hamlet of Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana on January 15, 1933. His ancestors had lived on the same plantation since slavery, remaining after emancipation to work the land as sharecroppers. Gaines and his family lived in the houses, much expanded, that had once served as slave quarters. His parents separated when he was eight; the strongest adult influence in his childhood was a great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, crippled from birth, who crawled from kitchen to the family's garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for him and for six of his brothers and sisters.

Story-telling and oral tradition were a powerful part of African American life in the rural South, and young Ernest Gaines absorbed the stories of his family and neighbors, acquiring a sense of history and an ear for the rhythms of vernacular speech. The only school for African American children in the district was conducted in a single room of the black church. School was open for less than half the year; from the age of nine, Ernest Gaines and the other children were sent to labor alongside their elders in the fields, harvesting vegetables and cotton. Pointe Coupee Parish offered no public high school to its black citizens. For three years, Gaines attended St. Augustine's School, a segregated Catholic school in the parish seat at New Roads, Louisiana.

During World War II, his mother and stepfather, like many African Americans of their generation, left the South to find work in the booming wartime economy. At 15, Gaines joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California, northeast of San Francisco. To keep him off the streets and out of trouble, his stepfather urged him to spend time in the public library. He soon became enthralled with literature, particularly the 19th century Russian masters, whose tales of a countryside steeped in feudal tradition echoed his own experience of plantation life. Finding no literature that directly portrayed the life of African Americans in the rural South, he began to write stories of his own, recreating the world of his childhood.

After serving in the U.S. Army, he enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he published a number of short stories in the University quarterly. His stories won him admission to the selective graduate program in creative writing at Stanford University, conducted by the novelist Wallace Stegner. Gaines settled in San Francisco after graduate school, working a variety of part-time jobs in the afternoon and reserving his morning hours for writing.

His first novel, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1964. A tragic love story played out against the complex caste system of rural Louisiana, the work met a favorable critical reception, but sold poorly. The next years were difficult ones for Gaines, as a succession of novels and short stories were rejected by publishers. In 1966, he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to continue his writing. The following year, his second novel, Of Love and Dust, appeared. Again, he told a story of life and love thwarted by the legacy of servitude and discrimination, but this book attracted greater attention than his first.

While many of his contemporaries were depicting the recent experience of African American migrants to the urban North, Gaines's work was rich in history, the accumulated experience of centuries. A collection of five stories, Bloodline, was published in 1968. In his novels and stories, Gaines created a vidily detailed imaginary community called Bayonne. Although it is clearly modeled on his own Louisiana parish, his Baynonne is full of invented characters and incidents, often shocking, but utterly convincing. Deeply grounded in a distinctive place and culture, his tales resound with universal themes of love and family, of responsibility, injustice and endurance.

In 1971, Gaines was appointed Writer-in-Residence at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. That same year, he completed the work that was to make him famous far beyond his own country. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) is the first-person narrative of a fictional 110-year-old woman, born in slavery, who lives to see the stirrings of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Her story led readers through a century of African American life. A 1974 television adaptation of the novel became a national event. The film won nine Emmy Awards and brought Gaines's work to the attention of a vast audience for the first time.
Not long after the book's publication, Gaines was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and switfly completed a number of major works. In My Father's House (1978) deals with the estrangement of fathers and sons, a recurring theme in his works. A Gathering of Old Men (1983) tells a complex story through the voices of 15 different narrators -- black, white, Cajun and Creole -- with a single violent act illuminating the history of an entire community. It too was adapted for television.

In 1993, Gaines received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." The same year saw the publication of his most critically acclaimed novel to date. A Lesson Before Dying describes the belated education of a young man wrongly sentenced to death. The book created an international sensation; beyond its achievement as a work of literature, it became a touchstone in the ongoing debate over capital punishment. The work received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and a 1999 television adaptation won the year's Emmy Award as Best Film for Television.

Since 1983, Ernest Gaines has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. He and his wife, attorney Dianne Saulney, divide their time between San Francisco and Louisiana. In addition to his other honors, Ernest Gaines has been awarded the National Humanities Medal of the United States, and is a Chevalier of France's Order of Arts and Letters. In 2007, the Baton Rouge Foundation established the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence to recognize new fiction by African American authors.
In addition to his novels and stories, Gaines is a well-regarded essayist and is much in demand as a public speaker and commentator on American life. A number of his stories and essays were gathered in the 2005 collection Mozart and Leadbelly. Today, his permanent residence in Louisiana is a house that he and his wife built on land that was once part of River Lake Plantation, where he spent his childhood, and where his ancestors labored for generations.

This page last revised on Mar 26, 2008 17:42 PDT

~From Academy of Achievement~

America's Beloved Best Friend

Oprah Winfrey Biography
Entertainment Executive

"It Doesn't Matter Who You Are, Where You Come From.
The Ability to Triumph Begins With You. Always"

~Oprah Winfrey~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Born in Kosciusko on January 29, 1954, Mississippi, Oprah Winfrey was reared by her grandmother on a farm where she "began her broadcasting career" by learning to read aloud and perform recitations at the age of three. From age six to 13, she lived in Milwaukee with her mother. After suffering abuse and molestation, she ran away and was sent to a juvenile detention home at the age of 13, only to be denied admission because all the beds were filled. As a last resort, she was sent to Nashville to live under her father's strict discipline. Vernon Winfrey saw to it that his daughter met a midnight curfew, and he required her to read a book and write a book report each week. "As strict as he was," says Oprah, "he had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best."

Oprah Winfrey's broadcasting career began at age 17, when she was hired by WVOL radio in Nashville, and two years later signed on with WTVF-TV in Nashville as a reporter/anchor. She attended Tennessee State University, where she majored in Speech Communications and Performing Arts.
In 1976, she moved to Baltimore to join WJZ-TV news as a co-anchor, and in 1978 discovered her talent for hosting talk shows when she became co-host of WJZ-TV's "People Are Talking," while continuing to serve as anchor and news reporter.

In January 1984, she came to Chicago to host WLS-TV's "AM Chicago," a faltering local talk show. In less than a year, she turned "AM Chicago" into the hottest show in town. The format was soon expanded to one hour, and in September 1985 it was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Seen nationally since September 8, 1986, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" became the number one talk show in national syndication in less than a year.

In June 1987, in its first year of eligibility, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" received three Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Host, Outstanding Talk/Service Program and Outstanding Direction. In June 1988, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" received its second consecutive Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Talk/Service Program, and she herself received the International Radio and Television Society's "Broadcaster of the Year" Award. She was the youngest person and only the fifth woman ever to receive the honor in IRTS's 25-year history.

Before America fell in love with Oprah Winfrey the talk show host, she captured the nation's attention with her poignant portrayal of Sofia in Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple. Winfrey's performance earned her nominations for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress. Critics again lauded her performance in Native Son, a movie adaptation of Richard Wright's classic 1940 novel.

Her love of acting and her desire to bring quality entertainment projects into production prompted her to form her own production company, HARPO Productions, Inc., in 1986. Today, HARPO is a formidable force in film and television production. Based in Chicago, HARPO Entertainment Group includes HARPO Productions, Inc., HARPO Films and HARPO Video, Inc. In October, 1988, HARPO Productions, Inc. acquired ownership and all production responsibilities for "The Oprah Winfrey Show" from Capitol Cities/ABC, making Oprah Winfrey the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. The following year, HARPO produced it first television miniseries, the The Women of Brewster Place, with Oprah Winfrey as star and Executive Producer. It has been followed by the TV movies There Are No Children Here (1993), and Before Women Had Wings(1997), which she both produced and appeared in. In 1998, she starred in the feature film Beloved, from the book by the Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison.

In 1991, motivated in part by her own memories of childhood abuse, she initiated a campaign to establish a national database of convicted child abusers, and testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a National Child Protection Act. President Clinton signed the "Oprah Bill" into law in 1993, establishing the national database she had sought, which is now available to law enforcement agencies and concerned parties across the country.

Oprah Winfrey was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century by Time magazine, and in 1998 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Her influence extended to the publishing industry when she began her on-air book club. Oprah Book Club selections became instant bestsellers, and in 1999 she received the National Book Foundation's 50th anniversary gold medal for her service to books and authors.
She is one of the partners in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network presenting programming designed primarily for women. In 2000, Oprah's Angel Network began presenting a $100,000 "Use Your Life Award" to people who are using their lives to improve the lives of others. When Forbes magazine published its list of America's billionaires for the year 2003, it disclosed that Oprah Winfrey was the first African-American woman to become a billionaire.

This page last revised on Mar 10, 2009 11:05 PDT
~From Academy of Achievement~

America's Renaissance Woman

Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian

"I believe that Each of Us Comes from the Creator
Trailing Wisps of Glory"
~Maya Angelou~

By Agustinus Gius Gala


Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928. Her parents divorced when she was only three and she was sent with her brother Bailey to live with their grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, the young girl experienced the racial discrimination that was the legally enforced way of life in the American South, but she also absorbed the deep religious faith and old-fashioned courtesy of traditional African American life. She credits her grandmother and her extended family with instilling in her the values that informed her later life and career. She enjoyed a close relationship with her brother, who gave her the nickname Maya when they were very young.

At age seven, while visiting her mother in Chicago, she was sexually molested by her mother's boyfriend. Too ashamed to tell any of the adults in her life, she confided in her brother. When she later heard the news that an uncle had killed her attacker, she felt that her words had killed the man. She fell silent and did not speak for five years. Maya began to speak again at 13, when she and her brother rejoined their mother in San Francisco. Maya attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's Labor School, where she was exposed to the progressive ideals that animated her later political activism. She dropped out of school in her teens to become San Francisco's first African American female cable car conductor. She later returned to high school, but became pregnant in her senior year and graduated a few weeks before giving birth to her son, Guy. She left home at 16 and took on the difficult life of a single mother, supporting herself and her son by working as a waitress and cook, but she had not given up on her talents for music, dance, performance and poetry.

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she took the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband's name. Although the marriage did not last, her performing career flourished. She toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess in 1954 and 1955. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and recorded her first record album, Calypso Lady (1957). She had composed song lyrics and poems for many years, and by the end of the 1950s was increasingly interested in developing her skills as a writer. She moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and took her place among the growing number of young black writers and artists associated with the Civil Rights Movement. She acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed a Cabaret for Freedom with the actor and comedian Godfrey Cambridge.

In New York, she fell in love with the South African civil rights activist Vusumzi Make and in 1960, the couple moved, with Angelou's son, to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, Angelou served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. Angelou and Guy later moved to Ghana, where she joined a thriving group of African American expatriates. She served as an instructor and assistant administrator at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times and the Ghanaian Broadcasting Company.

During her years abroad, she read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. She met with the American dissident leader Malcolm X in his visits to Ghana, and corresponded with him as his thinking evolved from the racially polarized thinking of his youth to the more inclusive vision of his maturity.
Maya Angelou returned to America in 1964, with the intention of helping Malcolm X build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and his plans for a new organization died with him. Angelou involved herself in television production and remained active in the Civil Rights Movement, working more closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who requested that Angelou serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she found solace in writing, and began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book tells the story of her life from her childhood in Arkansas to the birth of her child. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1970 to widespread critical acclaim and enormous popular success.

Seemingly overnight, Angelou became a national figure. In the following years, books of her verse and the subsequent volumes of her autobiographical narrative won her a huge international audience. She was increasingly in demand as a teacher and lecturer and continued to explore dramatic forms as well. She wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the film Georgia, Georgia (1972). Her screenplay, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Angelou has been invited by successive Presidents of the United States to serve in various capacities. President Ford appointed her to the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission and President Carter invited her to serve on the Presidential Commission for the International Year of the Woman. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world.

Since 1981, Angelou has served as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has continued to appear on television and in films including Poetic Justice (1993) and the landmark television adaptation of Roots (1977). She has directed numerous dramatic and documentary programs on television and directed her first feature film, Down in the Delta, in 1996.
The list of her published works now includes more than 30 titles. These include numerous volumes of verse, beginning with Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971). Books of her stories and essays include Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now (1993) and Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997). She has continued the compelling narrative of her life in the books Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1987) and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002).

In 1991, 1994 and 1997, Maya Angelou participated in a series of live broadcasts for Achievement Television in which she took questions submitted by students from across the United States. The interview with Maya Angelou on this web site has been condensed from these broadcasts.

This page last revised on Aug 26, 2005 15:39 PDT

~From Academy of Achievement~

M. Yunus Pembebas Kaum Papa

M. Yunus Pembebas Kaum Papa
Penerima Nobel Perdamaian 2006

By Agustinus Gius Gala


Nama : Muhammad Yunus
Lahir : Chittagong, Bangladesh, 28 Juni 1940
Isteri : Afrozi (Menikah April 1980)
Anak : Deena dan Monica (perempuan)
Pendidikan :- Chittagong Collegiate School;- Chittagong College;- Universitas Dhaka (BA pada 1960 dan MA pada 1961);- Universitas Vanderbilt (PhD pada 1970)

Penghargaan Internasional:1978 – President’s Award, Bangladesh1984 – Ramon Magsaysay Award, Filipina1989 – Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Swiss1993 – CARE Humanitarian Award1994 – World Food Prize1996 – Simon Bolivar Prize (UNESCO)1998 – Sydney Peace Prize1998 – Prince of Asturias Award2004 – The Economist Newspaper’s Prize2006 – Mother Teresa Award2006 – 8th Seoul Peace Prize2006 – Hadiah Nobel Perdamaian bersama Grameen Bank.

Muhammad Yunus dan Grameen Bank Banglades meraih Nobel Perdamaian 2006. Ini untuk pertama kali, sebuah usaha pemberantasan kemiskinan mendapatkan sendiri apresiasi itu. Komite Nobel makin berpihak kepada upaya pencegahan perang yang paling fundamental, pemberantasan kemiskinan. Perdamaian haruslah merupakan sebuah perdamaian yang berkeadilan. Pria yang rambutnya sudah memutih itu tertawa riang sambil melambaikan tangan di antara para kerabat dan masyarakat Bangladesh setelah mengetahui namanya diumumkan sebagai penerima Hadiah Nobel untuk Perdamaian 2006 di Dhaka, Bangladesh. "Ini penghargaan bagi kaum miskin!" seru Muhammad Yunus (66), pendiri Bank Grameen yang kini memiliki 2.226 cabang di 71.371 desa dan mampu menyalurkan kredit puluhan juta dollar AS per bulan kepada 6,6 juta warga miskin.Siapa yang menyangka. Hingga detik-detik terakhir, Muhammad Yunus memang sama sekali tidak disebut-sebut berpeluang menerima hadiah Nobel Perdamaian 2006. Banyak kalangan menjagokan mantan Presiden Finlandia Martti Ahtisaari yang berjasa meredakan konflik Aceh. Tokoh lain yang dijagokan adalah Mantan Menteri Luar Negeri Australia Gareth Evans yang berjasa merekonstruksi Kamboja dan Vietnam; aktivis etnik Uighur Rebiya Kadeer yang menuduh Pemerintah China menyiksa orang Uighur di barat daya Xinjiang; dan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Namun tahun ini, untuk pertama kalinya, pemenangnya bukanlah selebriti yang sudah terkenal di dunia, juga bukan figur dan badan yang dijagokan, tetapi yang peduli pada pemberdayaan kaum papa dan wanita. Komite Nobel Norwegia dalam keputusannya punya alasan tersendiri. “Komite telah memutuskan untuk menganugerahkan Nobel Perdamaian 2006 kepada Muhammad Yunus dan Grameen Bank. Itu adalah penghargaan atas usaha mereka menciptakan pembangunan ekonomi dan sosial dari tataran paling bawah," demikian kata Ketua Komite Nobel Norwegia Ole Danbolt Mjoes, di Oslo, Jumat (13/10). “Muhammad Yunus telah memperlihatkan diri sebagai seorang pemimpin, yang menerapkan visinya ke dalam hal praktis demi peruntungan jutaan orang, tidak hanya di Banglades, tetapi juga di banyak negara," lanjutnya lagi. Sedangkan Asle Sveen, seorang sejarawan Norwegia mengatakan, "Ini adalah untuk pertama kali, sebuah usaha pemberantasan kemiskinan mendapatkan sendiri apresiasi itu.

Sudah terlalu banyak nominasi bagi pihak-pihak yang melerai konflik-konflik. Kini Komite Nobel makin berpihak kepada upaya pencegahan perang yang paling fundamental. Mengupayakan perdamaian tidaklah cukup, perdamaian haruslah merupakan sebuah perdamaian yang berkeadilan. Salah satu penyebab perang, yakni kelaparan dan kemiskinan, harus diatasi mulai dari akarnya," kata Sveen. Sekjen PBB Kofi Anna juga menyatakan pendapat yang senada. "Terima kasih pada Yunus dan Grameen Bank. Kredit mikro telah menjadi salah satu alat untuk memotong lingkaran kemiskinan yang paling membelit wanita," kata Annan. "Kita tak bisa mengatasi terorisme dengan perang langsung terhadap terorisme, tetapi dengan memberi akses kehidupan pada kaum miskin," lanjut Kofi Annan. Komentar senada juga bermunculan dari berbagai pemimpin dunia, mulai dari Kanselir Jerman Angela Merkel, Presiden Perancis Jacques Chirac hingga Raja Spanyol Juan Carlos.Pembela Kaum Papa dan WanitaKiprah Yunus memberdayakan kaum papa telah dilakukannya sejak tahun 1974. Ketika itu, sebagai profesor ekonomi di Universitas Chittagong, dia memimpin para mahasiswa untuk berkunjung ke desa-desa miskin di Bangladesh. Betapa kagetnya Yunus ketika dia menyaksikan warga miskin di desa-desa berjuang lolos bertahan dari kelaparan yang melanda negara itu dan telah menewaskan ratusan ribu orang. Selanjutnya, sebagai akademisi Yunus pun merasa berdosa. "Ketika banyak orang sedang sekarat di jalan-jalan karena kelaparan, saya justru sedang mengajarkan teori-teori ekonomi yang elegan," kata Yunus. "Saya mulai membenci diri saya sendiri karena bersikap arogan dan menganggap diri saya bisa menjawab persoalan itu (kemiskinan). Kami profesor universitas semuanya pintar, tetapi kami sama sekali tidak tahu mengenai kemiskinan di sekitar kami.

Sejak itu saya putuskan kaum papa harus menjadi guru saya," tambahnya. Dari perasaan bersalah itu, laki-laki kelahiran Chittagong tahun 1940 itu mulai mengembangkan konsep pemberdayaan kaum papa. Filosofi yang dia bangun adalah bagaimana membantu kaum miskin agar bisa mengangkat derajat mereka sendiri. Dia tidak ingin memberi ikan, melainkan memberi pancing kepada kaum papa untuk mencari ikan sendiri.Tekad Yunus semakin bulat setelah mengetahui seorang ibu perajin bambu bernama Sufia Begum bolak-balik berutang kepada tengkulak untuk mendapat modal membuat bangku dari bambu. Sufia yang tinggal di desa Jobra dekat Universitas Chittagong meminjam uang 5 taka atau kurang dari Rp 850 untuk setiap bangku. Namun, dia harus mengembalikan utang tersebut berikut bunganya sebesar Rp 184. "Saya berkata pada diri sendiri, oh Tuhan, hanya karena lima taka dia menjadi budak. Saya tidak mengerti mengapa mereka harus menjadi begitu miskin padahal mereka bisa membuat barang kerajinan yang bagus," kata Yunus. Untuk membantu Sufia dan teman-temannya sesama perajin, awalnya Yunus merogoh koceknya sendiri sebesar 27 dollar AS.

Saat itu, dia begitu yakin bahwa jika orang miskin diberi akses kredit seperti yang diberikan kepada orang kaya, mereka pasti bisa mengelolanya dengan baik. "Berikan itu (kredit) kepada orang miskin, mereka akan bisa mengurus dirinya," katanya. Keyakinan Yunus tidak meleset. Program kredit mikro yang digulirkannya terus berkembang. Dua tahun kemudian, Yunus mulai mengembangkan program kredit mikro tanpa agunan untuk kaum papa yang tidak dapat mengakses pinjaman bank. Program ini menjadi semacam gugatan Yunus terhadap ketidakadilan dunia terhadap kaum miskin. "Mengapa lembaga keuangan selalu menolak orang miskin? Mengapa informasi teknologi menjadi hak eksklusif orang kaya," tuturnya. Tahun 1976, Yunus mentransformasi lembaga kreditnya menjadi sebuah bank formal dengan aturan khusus bernama Bank Grameen, atau Bank Desa dalam bahasa Bengali. Kini, bank ini memiliki 2.226 cabang di 71.371 desa.

Hebatnya lagi, modal bank ini 94 persen dimiliki nasabah, yakni kaum miskin, dan sisanya dimiliki pemerintah. Bank tersebut kini mampu menyalurkan kredit puluhan juta dollar AS per bulan kepada 6,6 juta warga miskin yang menjadi peminjamnya. Sebanyak 96 persen nasabah bank ini adalah kaum perempuan. Untuk menjamin pembayaran, Bank Grameen menggunakan sistem yang dinamakan ‘grup solidaritas’. Kelompok kecil yang bersama-sama mengajukan pinjaman, di dalamnya terdapat anggota yang bertindak sebagai penjamin pembayaran. Pinjaman ini mirip dana bergulir, di mana ketika satu anggota telah berhasil mengembalikan pinjaman, akan digunakan oleh anggota lainnya. Bank Grameen kemudian memperluas cakupan pemberian kreditnya dengan memberikan pinjaman rumah (KPR), proyek irigasi, pinjaman untuk usaha tekstil, dan usaha lainnya.Pada akhir 2003, Bank Grameen meluncurkan program baru, yang membidik para pengemis di Bangladesh. Pinjaman bagi para pengemis rata-rata sebesar 500 taka atau setara 9 dollar AS.

Pinjaman tanpa agunan ini tidak dikenakan bunga dengan waktu pembayaran fleksibel. Syaratnya pinjaman harus dikembalikan dari hasil pekerjaan mereka dan bukan dari mengemis. “Kami berupaya menaikkan harkat selain tentunya meningkatkan kemampuan ekonomi mereka,” kata Yunus dalam situsnya. Mereka diberikan tanda pengenal berupa pin dengan logo bank sebagai bukti bahwa ada bank yang mendukung kegiatan mereka. Bank Grameen bahkan membuat perjanjian dengan beberapa toko lokal agar meminjamkan mereka sejumlah barang, sesuai plafon utangnya, untuk dijual kembali. Bank menjamin pengembaliannya jika ternyata mereka gagal bayar. Mereka menjual roti, permen, acar, dan mainan sembari mereka mengemis. Para pengemis, atau yang disebut struggling member terbuka untuk membuka tabungan di Grameen. Mereka juga dilindungi asuransi jika terjadi kematian. Hingga pertengahan 2005, sebanyak 31 juta taka pinjaman telah disalurkan bagi 47 ribu lebih pengemis. Sebanyak 15,4 juta di antara pinjaman itu telah dikembalikan.

Bank Grameen juga telah berkembang menjadi Grameen Family of Enterprises yang membawahkan delapan lembaga profit dan nonprofit, semuanya ditujukan untuk mendorong masyarakat terangkat derajatnya. Divisi perbankannya mencatat keuntungan sebesar 15,21 juta dolar pada 2005 lalu.Gerakan pemberdayaan kaum papa yang diprakarsai Muhammad Yunus kini diadopsi oleh lembaga-lembaga pemberdayaan masyarakat miskin di seluruh dunia. Bahkan, Bank Dunia yang sebelumnya memandang program ini secara sebelah mata kini mengadopsi gagasan kredit mikro. Lebih dari 17 juta orang miskin di seluruh dunia telah terbantu dengan program kredit mikro ini. Yunus dan Grameen Bank mendapatkan hadiah sebesar 1,36 juta dollar AS (sekitar Rp 12,5 miliar). Hadiah itu, kata Yunus, akan dipakai untuk proyek yang menghasilkan makanan bergizi, murah dan juga kepada perawatan mata, pengadaan air minum serta pelayanan kesehatan.

==============================================

Pengemis pun Dipinjami

Kompas, 30 Oktober 2006: Pengemis mendapat kucuran kredit dan bisa mengembalikannya. Bagaimana bisa? Mungkin begitulah pertanyaan banyak orang. Itu betul-betul nyata. Memang bukan di negeri kita ini yang kian banyak pengemisnya, tetapi di Bangladesh yang dilakukan oleh pemenang Hadiah Nobel Perdamaian, Muhammad Yunus. "Kesalahan terbesar" yang dilakukan bank-bank selama ini karena mereka hanya mau meminjamkan uang atau membuka kran kredit kepada orang yang sudah punya "uang" dalam arti penghasilan dan aset. Coba kita datang ke bank meminjam uang, mana mereka mau tanpa jaminan. Entah berupa surat motor, surat mobil, surat rumah atau tanah, dan lainnya. Pendekanya kita harus punya penghasilan dulu baru bisa dipinjami uang. Artinya, hanya orang yang punya uang bisa meminjam. Muncullah istilah "bankable", sebuah kata yang sangat menyesakkan bagi mereka yang tak punya uang, tak punya aset untuk dijadikan jaminan (kolateral) kepada bank agar bisa memiliki akses untuk meminjam.

Pikiran bankir, pasti hanya orang yang sudah punya penghasilan yang bisa mengembalikan pinjamannya. Kalau pun ada penghasilan, tetapi pinjaman tak dikembalikan, bank bisa menyita aset jaminan kita. Lalu siapalah yang mau meminjamkan orang yang belum punya penghasilan, orang yang miskin, orang yang tak punya aset untuk dijaminkan? Kesalahan cara pandang dan pola berpikir itulah yang hendak "diputar" oleh Muhammad Yunus, yang meraih Hadiah Nobel Perdamaian tahun ini. Ia memang bukan bankir, tetapi seorang profesor ekonomi, yang sesak melihat kemiskinan di negerinya. Belajar dari pengalaman menyalurkan kredit kepada orang miskin melalui Grameen Bank yang dirintisnya sejak tahun 1976, dan telah terbukti mereka tidak mengemplang utang dengan ukuran hampir 99 persen peminjam, yakni golongan orang paling miskin, mengembalikan pinjamannya, maka mulai tahun 2003, Yunus memulai langkah berani, bahkan mungkin sebagian orang akan menyebutnya nekat, merintis penyaluran kredit kepada para genldangan pengemis di Bangladesh. "Pengangguran menjadio pilihan bagi banyak orang miskin di Bangladesh, akibat dampak bencana banjir, perceraian, kematian tulang punggung penghasilan keluarga, cacat dan sebaginya.

Dan banyak yang menjadikannya pekerjaan seumur hidupnya," ujar Yunus. Pengemis yang memang banyak jumlahnya (sekitar 70 persen dari total 15... penduduk) di negara itu, tidak terjangkau dengan begitu banyak intervensi pengentasan kemiskinan. Program yang dinamai The Struggling (Beggar) Members Program" merupakan inisiatif yang diambil Grameen Bank untuk kampanye berkelanjutan pengentasan kemiskinan, namun program yang sudah ada sebelumnya, yakni program kredit mikro kepada kebanyakan wanita, tidak bisa diterapkan kepada para pengemis itu. Tetapi prinsip Yunus dan Grameen Bank-nya, kredit seharusnya dipahami sebagai hak asasi manusia. Kuncinya, program ini memang unik, sebab bahkan "memangkas" kebiasaan dan "memotong" regulasi aturan yang telah berlaku untuk anggota reguler (regular members), sebutan bagi nasabah kredit mikro. Karena itu pula, para anggota pengemis tidak disyaratkan memenuhi aturan pemberian kredit mikro. Meski pengemis itu berapiliasi dengan grup anggota reguler, mereka tidak berkewajiban hadir setiap rapat yang diselenggarakan sekali seminggu oleh Grameen Bank.

Akan tetapi, anggota grup reguler, bertindak sebagai mentor bagi anggota pengemis, dengan menyediakan petunjuk pelaksanaan dan dukungan bagi mereka. "Bank memperlakukan angota pengemis dengan perlakuan dan perhatian yang sama dengan anggota reguler dan anggota reguler diwanti-wanti untuk tidak menggunakan istilah pengemis yang secara sosial berkonotasi kuarng baik," kata Yunus. Karena itulah, tipikal pinjaman yang diberikan memang "sungguh sangat kecil sekali", hanya Tk 500 (9 dollar). Pinjaman itu tidak memerlukan kolateral atau agunan, dan sama sekali tidak dikenakan suku bunga. Pembayaran kembali dari pengemis itu pun sangat fleksibel, yang diputuskan sendiri oleh penerimanya. Pembayaran pinjaman akan dibayar sesuai kemampuan meraih keuntungan mereka. Suatu hal yang paling ditekankan, pinjaman itu tidak dibayar dari uang hasil mengemis. Artinya, dengan cara seperti itu, mereka memang harus berusaha lepas dari pekerjaan mengemis. Kalau begitu, pengemis berkurang? Ya.... "Tujuan program ini bukan hanya memberdayakan secara ekonomi, tetapi juga mengangkat moral dan harga diri para pengemis itu," ujar Yunus.

Oleh karena itu, para pengemis penerima pinjaman dari Grameen Bank diberi identitas atau tanda pengenal yang berlogo Grameen Bank untuk menunjukkan bahwa dukungan Grameen Bank berada di belakang mereka. Bank membuat perjanjian dengan toko-toko lokal untuk memberi para pengemis itu saluran akses (credit line) sehingga para pengemis itu dapat mengambil barang senilai batas yang ditentukan untuk dijual di desanya. Dengan demikian, para pengemis tersebut dapat menjual berbagai macam barang, seperti roti, permen, mainan, dan sebagainya. Sementara Grameen Bank menyediakan jaminan kepada toko-toko itu, untuk membayarnya sekiranya para pengemis itu gagal bayar. Sekiranya mereka mampu menabung, tentu saja lebih baik. Mereka pun dilindungi dengan skim arusansi kredit, yang akan dibayar sepenuhnya oleh Grameen Bank manakala si penerimakredit meninggal. Sekitar 500 taka akan disediakan Emergency Fund yang dibentuk Grameen Bank untuk biaya penguburan bagi mereka yang mengalami kematian keluarga. Menurut Yunus dalam salah satu makalahnya, para pengemis itu disediakan berbagai hadiah bagi mereka yang membayar kembali kreditnya. "Meskpiun tidak ada kewajiban (semacam aturan tertulis) untuk keluar dari pekerjaan mengemis, namun dalam banyak kasus di antara mereka yang justru meraih peningkatan status, menjadi pengusaha," kata Yunus.

~From TokohIndonesia DotCom (Ensiklopedi Tokoh Indonesia)~

Mother for All People of The World

Mother Teresa dari Calcutta

"By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian.
By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world.

As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."
~ Beata Teresa dari Calcutta~

By Agustinus Gius Gala

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu dilahirkan pada tanggal 26 Agustus 1910 di Skopje, sebagai yang bungsu dari tiga bersaudara putra-putri Bapak Nikola dan Ibu Drane Bojaxhiu. Pada usia delapan belas tahun, bulan September 1928, Agnes masuk Biara Suster-suster Loreto di Irlandia. Ia memilih nama Suster Maria Teresa sebagai kenangan akan St. Theresia Lisieux. Pada bulan Desember, Sr Teresa berangkat ke India dan tiba di Calcutta pada tanggal 6 Januari 1929. Setelah mengucapkan Kaul Pertamanya pada bulan Mei 1931, Sr Teresa ditugaskan untuk mengajar di sekolah putri St Maria, Calcutta. Pada tanggal 24 Mei 1937, Sr. Teresa mengucapkan Kaul Kekalnya, dan menjadi “pengantin Yesus” untuk “selama-lamanya”. Sejak saat itu ia dipanggil Ibu Teresa. Ia tetap mengajar di sekolah St Maria dan pada tahun 1944 diangkat sebagai kepala sekolah.

Pada tanggal 10 September 1946, dalam perjalanan kereta api dari Calcutta ke Darjeeling untuk menjalani retret tahunannya, Ibu Teresa menerima “inspirasi”, “panggilan dalam panggilan”-nya. Pada hari itu, dengan suatu cara yang tidak pernah dapat dijelaskannya, dahaga Yesus akan cinta dan akan jiwa-jiwa memenuhi hatinya. “Mari, jadilah cahaya bagi-Ku.” Sejak itu, Ibu Teresa dipenuhi hasrat “untuk memuaskan dahaga Yesus yang tersalib akan cinta dan akan jiwa-jiwa” dengan “berkarya demi keselamatan dan kekudusan orang-orang termiskin dari yang miskin”. Pada tanggal 17 Agustus 1948, untuk pertama kalinya Ibu Teresa tampil mengenakan sari putih dengan pinggiran garis-garis warna biru. Ia keluar melewati gerbang Biara Loreto yang amat dicintainya untuk memasuki dunia orang-orang miskin.

Pada tanggal 21 Desember untuk pertama kalinya Ibu Teresa keluar-masuk perkampungan kumuh India. Ia mengunjungi keluarga-keluarga, membasuh borok dan luka beberapa anak, merawat seorang bapak tua yang tergeletak sakit di pinggir jalan dan merawat seorang wanita sekarat yang hampir mati karena kelaparan dan TBC. Setiap hari Ibu Teresa memulai hari barunya dengan persatuan dengan Yesus dalam Ekaristi, lalu kemudian pergi dengan rosario di tangan, untuk mencari dan melayani Dia dalam “mereka yang terbuang, yang teracuhkan, yang tak dikasihi”. Setelah beberapa bulan, ia ditemani oleh, seorang demi seorang, para pengikutnya yang pertama.

Pada tanggal 7 Oktober 1950, kongregasi Misionaris Cinta Kasih memperoleh pengakuan dari Gereja Katolik dengan persetujuan Paus Pius XII. Awal tahun 1960-an, Ibu Teresa mulai mengutus para susternya ke bagian-bagian lain India. Dekrit Pujian yang dianugerahkan kepada Kongregasi oleh Paus Paulus VI pada bulan Februari 1965 mendorong Ibu Teresa untuk membuka rumah penampungan di Venezuela. Langkah tersebut diikuti dengan langkah serupa di Roma, Tanzania dan pada akhirnya di setiap benua. Pada tahun 1980 hingga 1990, Ibu Teresa membuka rumah-rumah penampungan di hampir di seluruh negara-negara komunis, termasuk Uni Soviet, Albania dan Kuba. Namun demikian, meskipun telah berdaya-upaya, ia tidak pernah dapat membuka satu pun di Cina.

Agar dapat menanggapi kebutuhan kaum miskin, baik jasmani maupun rohani, dengan lebih baik, Ibu Teresa membentuk Kongregasi Para Biarawan Misionaris Cinta Kasih pada tahun 1963, dan pada tahun 1976 membentuk Para Suster Kontemplatif, pada tahun 1979 Para Biarawan Kontemplatif, dan pada tahun 1984 Para Imam Misionaris Cinta Kasih. Ia juga membentuk Kerabat Kerja Ibu Teresa dan Kerabat Kerja Sick and Suffering, yaitu orang-orang dari berbagai kalangan agama dan kebangsaan dengan siapa ia berbagi semangat doa, kesederhanaan, kurban silih dan karya sebagai pelayan cinta kasih. Semangat ini kemudian mengilhami terbentuknya Misionaris Cinta Kasih Awam. Atas permintaan banyak imam, pada tahun 1981 Ibu Teresa juga memulai Gerakan Corpus Christi bagi Para Imam sebagai “jalan kecil kekudusan” bagi mereka yang rindu untuk berbagi karisma dan semangat dengannya.

Mata dunia mulai terbuka terhadap Ibu Teresa dan karyanya. Berbagai penghargaan dianugerahkan kepadanya, mulai dari Indian Padmashri Award pada tahun 1962, Hadiah Perdamaian dari Beato Paus Yohanes XXIII, Nobel Perdamaian pada tahun 1979 dan penghargaan-penghargaan lainnya seperti: Magsaysay (Philipina), Warga Kehormatan India, Albania, USA, Doktor Kehormatan bidang Teologi Kedokteran Manusia dan diberikan kehormatan berpidato di depan Majelis Umum PBB. Di samping itu berbagai media dengan penuh minat mulai mengikuti perkembangan kegiatannya. Ibu Teresa menerima baik penghargaan maupun perhatian dunia “demi kemuliaan Tuhan atas nama orang-orang miskin.”
Sepanjang tahun-tahun terakhir hidupnya, meskipun mengalami gangguan penyakit yang cukup parah, Ibu Teresa tetap mengendalikan kongregasinya serta menanggapi kebutuhan orang-orang miskin dan Gereja. Pada tahun 1997, para biarawatinya telah hampir mencapai 4000 orang, tergabung dalam 610 cabang dan tersebar di 123 negara dari berbagai belahan dunia. Pada bulan Maret 1997, Ibu Teresa memberikan restu kepada Sr. Nirmala MC, penerusnya sebagai Superior Jenderal Misionaris Cinta Kasih. Setelah bertemu dengan Paus Yohanes Paulus II untuk terakhir kalinya, ia kembali ke Calcutta dan melewatkan minggu-minggu terakhir hidupnya dengan menerima kunjungan para tamu dan memberikan nasehat-nasehat terakhir kepada para biarawatinya.

Pada tanggal 5 September 1997 jam 9:30 malam, hidup Ibu Teresa di dunia ini berakhir. Jenazahnya dipindahkan dari Rumah Induk ke Gereja St. Thomas, gereja dekat Biara Loreto di mana ia menjejakkan kaki pertama kalinya di India hampir 69 tahun yang lalu. Ratusan ribu pelayat dari berbagai kalangan dan agama, dari India maupun luar negeri, berdatangan untuk menyampaikan penghormatan terakhir mereka. Ibu Teresa mendapat kehormatan dimakamkan secara kenegaraan oleh Pemerintah India pada tanggal 13 September. Jenazahnya diarak dalam kereta yang sama yang dulu digunakan mengusung jenazah Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, melewati jalan-jalan di Calcutta sebelum akhirnya dimakamkan di Rumah Induk Misionaris Cinta kasih. Segera saja makamnya menjadi tempat ziarah dan tempat doa bagi banyak orang dari berbagai kalangan agama, kaya maupun miskin. Ibu Teresa mewariskan teladan iman yang kokoh, harapan yang tak kunjung padam, dan cinta kasih yang luar biasa. Jawaban atas panggilan Yesus, “Mari, jadilah cahaya bagi-Ku,” menjadikannya seorang Misionaris Cinta Kasih, seorang “ibu bagi kaum miskin”, sebagai simbol belas kasih terhadap dunia, dan sebagai saksi hidup bagi Tuhan yang dahaga.

Pada Tanggal 26 April 2002, kurang dari dua tahun sejak kematiannya, mengingat reputasi Ibu Teresa yang tersebar luas karena kekudusan dan karya-karyanya, Paus Yohanes Paulus II memberikan persetujuan untuk dimulainya proses kanonisasi Ibu Teresa. Pada tanggal 20 Desember 2002 Bapa Suci menyetujui dekrit keutamaan-keutamaannya yang gagah berani dan mukjizat yang terjadi atas bantuan doanya. 19 Oktober 2003 Paus Yohanes Paulus II memaklumkan Ibu Teresa sebagai “BEATA TERESA dari CALCUTTA”.

“Jangan pernah kita lupa akan teladan mengagumkan yang diwariskan oleh Ibu Teresa, dan marilah kita mengingatnya bukan hanya dalam kata-kata belaka! Melainkan, dengan senantiasa memiliki keberanian untuk memberikan prioritas pada kemanusiaan.”
~ Paus Yohanes Paulus II~

Sumber: 1. “Vatican: The Holy See” website; 2. berbagai sumber,
disarikan dan diterjemahkan oleh YESAYA: www.indocell.net/yesaya”