BIG NEWS!!! UN Secretary General to Present World Mom of India with UNCA Award
It is with great honor that we announce that World Moms Blog’s Senior Editor, Purnima Ramakrishnan, has been awarded an Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial prize for print and online coverage of the United Nations and UN Agencies.
Purnima is the joint winner of the Bronze award, which will be awarded at the United Nations Correspondents Association’s (UNCA) gala in New York City on December 14th, 2015 by the guest of honor, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
As an active Senior Editor for World Moms Blog since 2011, Purnima’s posts include celebrating Day of the Girl in India through murals, her response to the Peshawar attacks in 2014, and speaking out after the Nepal Earthquake this year. Previously, she has also written about unwanted girl children in India, the Brazilian health care system, and breaking the caste system in India. You can find all of her posts at World Moms Blog on Purnima Ramakrishnan’s author page.
In addition to her work at World Moms Blog, she reported on poverty issues facing Brazil in her fellowship with The International Reporting Project. In 2013 she was a BlogHer International Activist Scholarship winner and travelled to Chicago, USA to speak on her advocacy for vaccines for children in the developing world. At the BlogHer conference she launched World Moms Blog’s successful 8 month #Moms4MDGs campaign to raise awareness for poverty issues around the world. Purnima has also been featured on The Gates Foundation’s Impatient Optimists blog, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life blog, The Huffington Post and on Baby Center’s Mission Motherhood™.
“The dinner will be attended by U.N. officials, diplomats, Hollywood celebrities, corporate and cultural organizations and journalists from around the world,” according to the official award notice. We are currently (and excitedly!) coordinating arrangements with the hope that Purnima will be able to travel from India to New York City to accept this prestigious award in person.
It is also with a flood of emotions that we learned about the life of Elizabeth Neuffer, the woman for whom the UNCA award was named. Elizabeth Neuffer was The Boston Globe bureau chief at the U.N., who died in a car crash at the age of 46 while covering postwar Iraq in 2003.
An award winning journalist, she was the first to report that indicted war criminals remained in power in post-war Bosnia, where she spent a year reporting on war crimes. Early on in her career, she reported from federal court in Boston, Capitol Hill during the Clinton Administration, Moscow during the break up of the Soviet Union and the Middle East during the Gulf War. She then became European Bureau Chief from 1994-1998 in Berlin. Elizabeth also dispatched to Africa to report on the 1996 return of Hutu refugees from Zaire to their native Rwanda.
Learning about the life of Elizabeth Neuffer reminds, us, at World Moms Blog that there is so much work left unfinished when it comes to reporting on human rights and justice in the world. We will gladly carry a small spark from the large torch she lit by the example of her leading reporting. It is an honor for Purnima to receive this award as an Senior Editor for World Moms Blog. Congratulations to Purnima Ramakrishnan and the entire World Moms Blog team! We will continue to work hard to provide a voice for women around the world and speak up for those who need us most.
Thank you to the UNCA Awards Selection Committee for their selection and congratulations to all UNCA award winners!
For more on the UNCA.
References:
“Elizabeth Neuffer, 46, Reporter Overseas for the Boston Globe” and Wikipedia Elizabeth Neuffer.
