SJEHG Awarded Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for 2012

Hospital Group Recognised in Prestigious Honour

We are delighted be able to announce that the Trustees of The Gandhi Foundation have chosen to award The Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for 2012 to The St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group.

In a letter to Philip Hardaker, Peace Award Committee Convenor, Dr S. Omar Hayat wrote that, “The Trustees felt that the Eye Hospital has been guided by one of the highest forms of humanitarian ideals, that of bringing medical care to an impoverished and politically unstable area.”

After acknowledging the cost of preventable blindness to the oPt and the poverty-relieving nature of the work that we do, Dr Hayat continued, “The charity in performing this work has engaged all communities in that area and in doing so, we believe, is helping to find common ground between the different people of that region.”

Friends of SJEHG will know that our Joint Teaching Programmes with the Hadassah and Shaare Zedek Medical Centres in Israeli West Jerusalem have not only permitted our local Palestinian Residents to benefit from outstanding educational opportunities, but have brought them into direct and intimate contact with their Israeli neighbours for over ten years now. 

In response to news of the award, Mr Hardaker said, “We have always hoped that – in some small way – this project was helping to facilitate trust and understanding.  The Hospital Group is both delighted and humbled to have been awarded this symbolic honour.”

The award will be presented formally in October 2012. 

With the support of The Gandhi Foundation’s Life President, Lord Attenborough, The Gandhi International Peace Award was inaugurated in 1998.  In 2011, it was presented to Dr Binayak Sen and Bulu Imam for their practice of nonviolence and their humanitarian work in Pakistan and India.