Rose Busingye, the founder of a Uganda-based nongovernmental organization that helps women and children with HIV/AIDS, received the 2019 Ford Family Notre Dame Award for International Development and Solidarity during a Sept. 12 ceremony at the University of Notre Dame.
Busingye’s group, Meeting Point International, provides medical care, schooling, and other services that help patients increase their self-sufficiency and develop social networks. Her work focuses on helping patients recognize their inherent dignity in a society that often shuns them because of their medical diagnosis.
“They are not defined by their sickness or by their poverty,” she said in a moderated discussion following the ceremony at the Hesburgh Center. “They are defined by their value...it is something that originally was there, that they were created with.”
The award is given annually by the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity in recognition of substantial contributions to human development through research, practice, public service, or philanthropy. The Ford Program is part of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.