Last November, in the grand setting of Verdala Palace, under the patronage of President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, seven nominees for the first ceremony celebrating the Peter Serracino Inglott Award for Civic Engagement, met to receive due recognition for their outstanding work in a wide range of voluntary civic endeavour.
The 2015 award rewarded civic participation and engagement: the process of working together to make a positive difference in the life of our communities and developing the combination of skills, knowledge, values and motivation to enhance our quality of life.
Those nominated for the award included: Anselmo Bugeja, a volunteer with Fondazzjoni U; Philip Chircop, founder president of Fondazzjoni Nanniet Malta; Fr Emmanuel Cordina, the founder of the OASI Centre in Gozo; and three civic organisations, Din l-Art Ħelwa, Hospice Malta, and the Migrants Offshore Aid Station. Also nominated posthumously for an individual award was Maurice de Giorgio, the founder president of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti.
As a glance at that list shows, making a choice between these worthy nominees for the award was a near impossible task. Anselmo Bugeja had been an active volunteer with Fondazzjoni U for several years. Fondazzjoni U is an exceptional philanthropic organisation whose purpose is to support good causes, such as missionary projects in India, the Philippines, Albania, Pakistan and elsewhere, through the media and Anselmo had contributed conspicuously to this cause.
Fr Peter was, during his lifetime, one of Malta’s foremost thinkers and a Renaissance man
Philip Chircop of Fondazzjoni Nanniet Malta had founded and run an organisation actively promoting the values and contribution of grandparents, an unsung mainstay of Maltese society.
Fr Cordina had dedicated the last 25 years of his life to founding and running the OASI Centre in Gozo, looking after the rehabilitation of victims of alcohol and substance addiction, and giving unstinting support to their families on a national basis.
De Giorgio’s posthumous nomination was for his extraordinary work for Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, to which he had given distinguished leadership, guidance, inspiration and vigour for the last 23 years of his life.
Din l-Art Ħelwa, then celebrating 50 since its inception, was nominated for its superb and untiring work in the field of cultural heritage and the natural environment.
Hospice Malta was nominated for its formidable voluntary work over the previous 26 years in palliative care for persons reaching the end of their lives and suffering from cancer, motor neurone disease or cardiac, respiratory and renal diseases.
The Migrants Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), which had captured the world’s attention for its superlative life-saving work in rescuing migrants from the central Mediterranean Sea and had so impressively shaped the debate on the merits of private citizen action in humanitarian affairs.
Although the judging panel could not duck their responsibility to make a decision – which saw the magnificent work of MOAS take the 2015 award, a modest glass statuette - there was a general agreement that there were, in reality, no winners, no losers among the nominees.
Only exemplary, dedicated and worthy participants whose nomination for an award was reward in itself. It constituted notable public recognition, designed to honour an individual or organisation that by their actions had made such a positive difference to our civil community.
Looking back at the entrants for the 2015 awards, it is fair to conclude, without risk of contradiction, that they were remarkable and covered well a span of worthy nominations - ranging from overseas philanthropy to social needs, from cultural and environmental heritage to humanitarian support - which the award had been designed to attract. They have formed the benchmark and the vanguard for the nominees yet to come.
It is therefore hoped that 2016 will again also see public recognition given to those many organisations and individuals in Malta quietly and modestly labouring on behalf of their community in a voluntary capacity, doing good for others.
It is very much hoped that this insight into the excellent nominations submitted last year will inspire other individuals or voluntary organisations to be put forward for an award. Only members of the public have the ability to do this.
The Peter Serracino Inglott Award is awarded annually to any individual or organisation that in the opinion of the judging panel makes an outstanding and significant contribution to civic thinking and engagement in a Maltese context.
Fr Peter was, during his lifetime, one of Malta’s foremost thinkers and a Renaissance man. He was a philosopher, theologian, academic, writer, mentor and priest. Reflecting the Aristotelian idea that thinking is completed by action, one of the areas closest to Fr Peter’s heart was civic participation and creative social innovation.
The Award is a permanent monument to Fr Peter, a founder member of the Today Public Policy Institute, Malta’s only independent, non-partisan think tank, who died in 2012. Fr Peter made a considerable contribution to the various issues on the agenda of the think-tank. It is for these reasons that it has established this award in his memory to honour his contribution to civic thinking and engagement and to recognise and encourage all those hard-working members of civil society in Malta who are following in the footsteps of everything Fr Peter held so dear.
He was a man who was greatly loved, recognised not only for his wisdom, originality, open-mindedness, enlightenment and puckish sense of humour, but also as a man of wonderful priestly charisma who contributed a great deal of inspiring work to the intellectual, emotional and spiritual development of Maltese working youths. He was the epitome of civic-mindedness.
Civic thinking, civic participation and civic engagement are those individual or collective actions or thinking which identify and address issues of public concern. They epitomise the process of working together to make a positive difference to the life of our communities.
The award may be made in recognition of any number of a range of issues. For example, those addressing social or environmental causes.
The effective implementation of social action. An important contribution to education or public policy. Creative thinking in any field of Maltese research. Any innovation that makes a marked improvement to the quality of life of our society. The scope has deliberately been made wide to cover any initiative or project which has as its focus civic engagement.
The Peter Serracino Inglott Award for 2016 will be in November. But all nominations for the 2016 award should be submitted to the Today Public Policy Institute by not later than June 30.
Applicants requiring more details about how to nominate somebody for the award should submit a request by email to: joseph.v.tabone@gmail.com