by World Moms Blog | Nov 18, 2015 | 2015, Africa, Asia, Award, Europe, International, Middle East, North America, Oceania, Purnima, South America, World Interviews, World Moms Blog, World Voice
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.
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Purnima Ramakrishnan | Dec 2, 2013 | Award, Childhood, Competition, Education, India, Inspirational, International, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, Purnima, The Alchemist, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, Younger Children
“Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man – Swami Vivakananda”
Sometime back I wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s school teacher and my perspective and how it was appropriate for our lives here too. To bring up a good human being and to help him/her learn and get educated is the role of the parent and also the teacher at school.
Well, there were these competitions going on in my seven year old son’s school again, here, in India. This time it was Western Music. I am so fond of these musicals. My son sang some of my favorites and then Que Sara Sara and Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. He continued to the preliminaries, quarter finals, semi-finals and the finals. But one day while preparing for the finals at home, my son suddenly said, “Not all are going to win.”
I said, “Yes, they are not. But if you want to win, you need to practise.”
He was not the type of person who was interested to sing, but the type who loved to listen to music and songs. And I discovered this during this time.
“But amma, I don’t care.”
“Well, you should do your best. And then if you don’t get to win, that is fine. But you should not just give up.”
“I am not giving up. I just don’t want to sing.”
“Oh?”
Well, I was at a loss of words. I did not want him to do something he did not want to do. But then we were already into the finals, and I thought was it not a sheer waste if he did not even participate? This got me thinking…
The next day I found this quote in his school’s website.
Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man – Swami Vivakananda.
We send our children to school for education and the teachers and parents are loving and affectionate and try to encourage the children to imbibe knowledge.
But then, what do they actually learn? Only what they chose to!
And also, sometimes they don’t learn and at other times they are very smart in academics. They also indulge in sports and other extra-curricular activities. We are happy, sometimes sad, and at times indifferent to various achievements, successes and failures and mediocre performances of our children. So many choices, actions, results, and yet Swami Vivekananda says we are all perfect.
If everyone is perfect, then where are the gaps? Why do only some people win? Why are there so many differences and scales of grades? ‘Manifestation’ is the significant word. What manifests out of a child is important. And whatever manifests, the society, the parents and the teachers are responsible to some extent. And then the children themselves are finally responsible. We bring up a child, giving him a lot of room to explore, think, discover and find joy, and, thereby, allow him to manifest his perfection.
I did not ask him to practise a lot for the singing competition. If he is not interested, let him not be. Maybe he is interested in building robots. Maybe he is interested in literary pursuits. Maybe he is interested in astronomy when he points out the pole star and Venus.
Because he is talented to sing, does not mean he should want to do it or become the next pop star. Whatever he allows to be manifested from himself, only will be, and I cannot force it.
And the reason for what he focuses on, no one can understand. It is his own mind acting under his own will and there are no explanations for that. So, let me not put a restraint to the manifestation of his perfection. Let him lay down his own options and channel his own interests.
In the end, he did end up participating in the finals, but without practising and the results are not out! But I shouldn’t care about the results because he doesn’t, right?
Is your child exercising independence in what he wants to do in life and what he wants to achieve? If so, are they different from what you think? And how do you handle it?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Purnima, our Indian mother writing from Chennai, India. Her contributions to the World Moms Blog can be found here. She also rambles at The Alchemist’s Blog.
Photo credit to Wiki Media Commons.
by Jennifer Burden | Nov 19, 2013 | 2013, Award, World Voice
Exciting news!!! World Moms Blog is a finalist for this year’s Bloganthropy Award, which “aims to recognize bloggers who have made a difference by using social media to effectively promote a good cause”, and we’re sooo excited!!
The award was created by Debbie Bookstaber and Candace Lindemann in 2010, and the amazing women who have been awarded include Katherine Stone (2010) of Post Partum Progress, the late Susan Niebur (2011) of Toddler Planet, Devan McGuinness (2012) of Unspoken Grief and Kristine Brite McCormick (special achievement award) of Cora’s Story.
This year’s finalists are invited to attend the Champions for Kids conference in Arkansas, USA, where the final award will be presented on Thursday, November 21st, 2013. Wish us luck!!
In addition to World Moms Blog, there are 2 other amazing finalists! Social Media Moms/New Jersey Digital Moms for their #JerseyLove campaign to help bring tourism back to the state of New Jersey in the USA after Superstorm Sandy and Denisse Montalvan of The Orphaned Earring for her creative idea to raise money for global orphanages by reengineering orphaned earrings are, both, also up for the Bloganthropy award. We are pleased to be in the company of a strong group of fellow finalists utilizing social media for social good!
Check out the full Bloganthropy Finalists 2013 press release.
And thank you to all of our contributors, editors and readers around the globe who have supported our social good initiatives, such as the #Moms4MDGs campaign to raise awareness for the UN’s goals to end extreme poverty, our World Voice column, GAVI Global Tea Parties to raise awareness for the importance of and access to life-saving immunizations for children in the developing world, fundraisers for CleanBirth.org and Shot@Life and for participating in the annual Social Good Summit and UN General Assembly festivities in New York City this year. And to our core, our World Moms who share their stories every week about what it’s like to be a mother around the world in good times and in tough times and who have jumped out of their comfort zones to report first-hand on events in their home country. Here’s to promoting understanding and tolerance by providing the world a window into the life and thoughts of a World Mom. And here’s to being a Bloganthropy award finalist!! Congrats to the World Moms Blog team!
Follow our Twitter Feed (@WorldMomsBlog) on Thursday, November 21st, 2013 for updates from the Champions for Kids conference!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by founder, Jennifer Burden of the USA.
Photo credit to Bloganthropy.
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by World Moms Blog | Mar 22, 2013 | Award, India, Motherhood, Purnima, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
World Moms Blog Senior Editor, Purnima Ramakrishnan, with her grandmother and friends speak about the importance of vaccines.
It was like a dream come true for Purnima Ramakrishnan of Chennai, India one morning this week. Just a few days ago she received confirmation that she had won the BlogHER International Activist Scholarship for her social good work on her blog, The Alchemist’s Blog, and as a Senior Editor, here, at World Moms Blog.
At the end of July, she will be on her way to Chicago, Illinois in the USA to present her work along with the three other international scholarship winners.
The e-mail from BlogHER stated, “Thank you for submitting your work for consideration to receive the International Activist Blogger Scholarship! We are so pleased to let you know that after careful deliberation, our selection committee has selected you as one of four recipients of this year’s scholarship!” (more…)
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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