In a nation where the literacy rate is 56 percent, the winner of the 2005 Opus Prize is working to ensure that every Indian citizen has a valuable education.

The Reach Education Action Programme, a Jesuit-founded system of literacy centers in India, will receive the $1 million annual Opus Prize, University President the Rev. Robert A. Wild announced Tuesday preceding the start of the Community Service Fair.

The Opus Group, a Twin Cities-based commercial real estate development corporation, funds the Opus Prize Foundation, which gives $1 million to a winner and $100,000 to each of two finalists in honor of faith-based entrepreneurial efforts to improve human dignity. Each year the foundation chooses a Catholic university to confer the prize.

"We chose Marquette University because we had a long-standing relationship with them… (They) really expose the students and the faculty to these recipients," said Don Neureuther, executive directorof the Opus Prize Foundation.

The Rev. Trevor Miranda founded the Reach Education Action Programme in 1996 and has since opened 450 literacy centers for impoverished children in India.

"Miranda believes that education is the shortest line to empowerment," Wild said.

In addition to Miranda's work with children, Wild said the organization has started programs to aid Indian women in becoming "agents of positive change" in their communities.

In conjunction with the conferral of the Opus Prize, Wild announced a series of documentaries and lectures on the topic of "Human Dignity, Human Rights: A Call to Service," which will be a year-long focus for Marquette.

"As members of the Marquette community, we bear a special responsibility to use our resources to build a more peaceful and equitable society," said H. Richard Friman, director of the Marquette Institute for Transnational Justice and a political science professor.

The first winner of the $100,000 prize is Juliana Akinyi Otieno, one of two pediatricians in a Kenyan city of 300,000. Wild said she was chosen for her "compassion, intellect, entrepreneurship and a rock-solid faith in God" despite a severe lack of medical supplies.

The other finalist is an agency called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, or Our Little Brothers and Sisters, a network of orphanages in Central America founded by the Rev. William Wasson that values academics, sharing and responsibility, Wild said.

The six-month selection process involved anonymous spotters who nominated individuals to receive the prize. Marquette's research department investigated each of the nominees, and a group of jurors met in January to narrow the nominees down to the three finalists, according to Neureuther.

Marquette students and faculty then traveled with Opus Foundation staff members to India, Kenya and Mexico on site visits called Due Diligence trips to aid in determining the $1 million prize winner.

Nicole Hertel, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, visited Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos in Mexico with Neureuther.

"The one thing I walked away with was a strong sense of family, something I never expected in a place that big," Hertel said.

The Opus Prize will be conferred on Nov. 7 at Marquette. The recipients will spend the week at events on campus dedicated to human rights awareness.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 8, 2005.