Richards, Isa Win First John L. Withers Award
FrontLines - August 2009
Two women who have spent decades working on USAID programs in Guatemala and Indonesia are winners of the first John L. Withers Memorial Award, considered among the highest awards the Agency can bestow.
Julia Becker Richards and Gartina Isa, who were informed of their awards in June, will be formally recognized during USAID’s annual awards ceremony
later this year.
The award is named after John L. Withers, a Foreign Service Officer who was among the first African-American officers
hired by the Agency. He died in 2007 at age 91 after a storied career marked by overcoming
barriers.
Withers was considered a magnetic leader, and served USAID in Laos, Burma, South Korea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and India. His heroism during World War II also received widespread attention.
As a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he ordered his all-black unit to secretly shelter two teenage
Jewish concentration camp survivors at a time when not following orders could destroy a black man’s military career. Decades later, Withers had an emotional reunion with the only
living survivor.
The Withers award “is presented
to an individual who has promoted human rights by demonstrating an unwavering professional or personal commitment
to universal human rights; pursuing policies and objectives related to protection
of minorities; performing an individual act of courage or extraordinary effort in difficult, demanding or hardship situations;
or providing leadership of pursuit of human rights by foresight,
decisiveness, persistence and persuasiveness.”
Here’s more about each winner. ★ —A.R.
Gartini Isa
By Jan Cartwright
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Gartini Isa
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Gartini Isa championed human rights and democratic freedoms over the course of her 30-plus-year career as a program development specialist with USAID in Indonesia.
Due, in part, to her efforts and like-minded political champions, in 1998, Indonesia emerged from the Suharto dictatorship and July 8 this year held fresh presidential
elections.
At USAID’s office in Indonesia, Gartini (who is known by her first name) managed programs supporting
civil society, good governance,
democracy, and human rights, including women’s rights. She was involved in securing USAID’s support for KBR68H Radio News Agency through an Asia Foundation grant, and worked on projects related to Islam and civil society. (See related story on page 12.)
Gartini has deep personal involvement in the issues she championed. During the darkest
days of the authoritarian regime, she attended demonstrations
after working hours, on weekends, and on her lunch breaks. At opposition hotspots like the Legal Aid Foundation in Jakarta, she befriended activists struggling for the free flow of information,
women’s rights, and other causes.
She formed close friendships with human rights defenders such as Munir Said Thalib and Xanana Gusmao, who would later become president of Timor-Leste. Many of the young activists she befriended in the 1990s are today active leaders in Indonesia’s political parties.
“It is the trust that is very important,” she said. Soft-spoken but with an ebullient personality, Gartini radiates authenticity and has a natural gift for building and maintaining relationships.
From 1997 to 1999, Gartini visited political prisoners at a time when few, if no, foreigners
were allowed into the jails. She gained access through her broad network of friends in the NGO community and served as a vital conduit of information
with these prisoners. She provided encouragement and moral support, and acquired supplies such as mattresses for prisoners.
Although she was aware that Indonesian authorities
might target her for her actions—she knew her phone was being tapped—she said she was never afraid. Her friends in the democracy and human rights movements went out of their way to protect
her. “Anyway,” she said, “I had many lawyer friends. They would get me out of trouble.”
Her proudest legacy is the creation of the Legal Aid Foundation for Women (BH-APIK). In the mid-1990s her involvement with women’s groups convinced her of the need for such an organization, and she successfully
advocated for seed money from USAID. Today, the organization is thriving and has been credited for its work drafting important anti-domestic violence legislation.
Gartini retired from USAID in 2008 and now lives in Washington. Despite the distance, she remains in touch with her vast network of friends and activists in Indonesia and she avidly follows
the progress of her country’s
burgeoning democracy. ★
Julia Becker Richards
By Wende Duflon
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Julia Becker Richards
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When Julia Becker Richards first set foot in Guatemala in 1974, a maya ajq’ij, a traditional community
leader, called her a person of the wind. The hope was that Richards would bring winds of change to the country beset with poverty and discrimination against its indigenous citizens.
As it turned out, the label proved accurate.
She has been recognized for 34 years of efforts to promote
human rights for the disadvantaged indigenous people in Guatemala.
She has worked with colleagues
and friends from different cultures to gain access to quality education and health care for historically
disenfranchised people—
particularly indigenous girls and young women and at times when it was very controversial, even dangerous,
to do so in Guatemala.
Richards arrived in the country as a graduate student in 1974 to work on nutritional and educational limitations of indigenous populations of the Guatemalan Highlands. Struck by the inequality she found in classrooms, Richards set out to promote bilingual, intercultural education.
“I saw the structural dimensions of an economy that perpetuated poverty and the discriminatory attitudes towards indigenous people,” said Richards. “This was intensely evident in classrooms
where Ladino teachers dictated to the assembled indigenous students in Spanish, which was poorly comprehended by almost everyone in the community.”
She returned after graduate
school to work on a dissertation on the same subjects at the height of Guatemala’s civil war. She was detained on separate occasions by both the leftist
guerrillas and the Army. Richards also learned Spanish and three Mayan languages, which very few non-Mayans do.
Before she joined the USAID team, Richards worked on two Agency-funded projects. She designed the first bilingual education project in the country’s history
and she produced the National Bilingual Education Program, which created the first-ever dictionaries and grammar books for the four major Mayan languages. Richards also co-produced, with her husband Michael Richards, the only comprehensive
sociolinguistic map of the country and the Atlas Lingüístico de Guatemala.
After many years as a professor
at leading Guatemalan universities, a consultant with international organizations, and a mentor and thesis advisor
to university students, Richards joined USAID’s Guatemala team as a full-time education officer.
In 2004, USAID’s Guatemala office shifted its focus to policy-oriented interventions with the Guatemalan Ministry of Education. Richards knew that reform at the central level of government was essential to provide quality education and health service delivery to all Guatemalans. Her extensive experience in the field helped to win support
from government, international
donors, and civil society leaders.
In 2005, Richards became the director of USAID’s Guatemala Health and Education Office, managing a 14-member in-house team and more than 20 projects. And then, on July 20, 2009, she was sworn in as a Foreign Service Officer. ★
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