Runa Khan, founder of Friendship, has been named a recipient of the 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Award for her more than two decades of leadership in developing locally led solutions that empower marginalised communities to live with greater opportunity, dignity and hope.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia’s premier prize and highest honour—widely regarded as “Asia's Nobel Prize”, recognising “greatness of spirit” and “transformative leadership in Asia”.
Runa Khan is the 14th recipient of the Award from Bangladesh, after, in particular, Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen and Mother Teresa from India, both of whom also received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Incidentally, Mother Teresa had travelled to Bangladesh in the nineties and blessed the river barge that would later become Friendship’s first hospital ship. Other outstanding awardees have also been the Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of Brac, the Dalai Lama and Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurasawa. The formal award ceremony will be held on 15 November in Manila, Philippines.
On receiving the award, Runa Khan said: “It is with great happiness and profound humility that I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award. There is no leader who walks alone, so it is an honour for me to receive this on behalf of the unaddressed communities, who allow us to walk beside them; and on behalf of my Friendship family whose tireless devotion makes this work possible every day. I thank also those who have trusted and walked this almost impossible path with me for 25 long years—just believing. My children whose patience and understanding awes me. This recognition is a wonderful responsibility, and I offer my deepest gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for their trust and for honouring the enduring faith and power of humanity.”
For Runa Khan, the recognition honours a body of work that began in Bangladesh’s remote riverine communities and grew into an integrated model for delivering solutions based on a deep understanding and respect of local communities and their realities. What began with a single floating hospital has grown into a social purpose organisation serving 7.5 million people annually across healthcare, education, climate action, sustainable economic development, inclusive citizenship and cultural preservation.
Its holistic approach reflects the interconnected challenges faced by remote communities. Under strong leadership, Friendship’s approach is simple: systems should be designed around people’s realities rather than expecting people to fit systems that cannot reach them. It recruits and trains local people and works with communities to shape the solutions meant for them, taking an inclusive approach by involving women and people with disabilities and connecting health, education, livelihoods, rights and climate resilience.
Five years after founding Friendship in Bangladesh, Runa Khan took the initiative to establish Friendship in Luxembourg in 2006, Netherlands in 2007, the UK in 2010, France in 2015, and Belgium in 2018. Her vision was to work as closely as possible with donors and creating partners, thereby bypassing the long chains of intermediaries in international aid while preserving local ownership. That vision has proven to be extremely effective thanks to a strong community of supporters, both public and private. The International entities have stood by the side of Friendship Bangladesh at every stage of its development over the past 24 years.
In her official Ramon Magsaysay Award citation, Runa Khan is being recognised for “her profound empathy for the poorest of the poor in her country, and her courage, vision, and tenacity in building and leading Friendship to accomplish her mission. In her hands, privilege became not an entitlement, but a responsibility; not a family legacy to protect, but a gift to be shared so that others, too, might have the chance to live with hope, opportunity, and dignity.”
The Ramon Magsaysay Award was first given in 1958 in memory of the seventh Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay.
In 68 years, the Award has been bestowed on 328 individuals and 28 organisations whose selfless service has offered their societies in 24 countries across Asia, and the rest of the world solutions to some of the most challenging problems of human development.
