Shillong, November 29: The Shillong Chamber Choir received its first ever humanitarian award at the 5th ‘Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice’ that was held at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. The award was given by the Harmony Foundation, founded in October 2005 by Dr. Abraham Mathai to establish communal harmony between various communities, castes and work towards the benefit of all the communities without any discrimination as to religion, caste, creed, gender or region. The patrons of the Foundation include Mr Tushar Gandhi, Mahesh Bhatt and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat.
The choir received the award in recognition for ‘promoting national integration through music’.Previous recipients of this prestigious award have included His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ms Kiran Bedi, Anna Hazare, Sayed Iqbal Haide, Oscar Fernandez and The Kripa Foundation to name a few.
This year, the award was presented to 10 awardees which included Dr. Sima Samar, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan & Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Ms. Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who is a student and activist who was shot in the neck and head by Taliban gunmen, Mr. Kuldip Nayar, NDTV and the Indian Cancer Society to name a few.
It is indeed an honor for the choir as being representatives of the to have received this award as a recognition for their noteworthy initiatives and the impact of art as a means to bridging the ‘wounded gaps.'(SP News)
