MANILA, Philippines (AP) — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo conferred a prestigious award Monday on a former Brooklyn journalist and American Peace Corps volunteer who was brutally killed in the Philippines, where she taught poor villagers and helped build a center to help protect whale sharks.
U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney received the Order of the Golden Heart award from Arroyo on behalf of Julia Campbell, who was bludgeoned to death by a local villager on April 8 while hiking alone in northern Ifugao Province's famed mountainside rice terraces.
Arroyo also gave the same award to the U.S. Peace Corps, which has assigned more than 8,000 volunteers to the Philippines since 1961, Philippine officials said.The Golden Heart, created in 1954, is given to government officials and civilians, including foreign volunteers, who have helped provide assistance to help improve the plight of impoverished Filipinos.
Campbell, of Fairfax, Va., was to leave the Philippines this month after serving two years with the Peace Corps in the countryside, where she helped establish an ecology center named for her in Sorsogon province, southeast of Manila, an area famous for whale sharks.
She also taught English and literature at the Divine Word College in Legazpi city, capital of Albay province near Sorsogon.
Filipino prosecutors have filed murder charges against a woodcarver who confessed to bludgeoning Campbell to death with a rock and wooden club because she bumped into him along a narrow mountain trail.
Campbell worked as a journalist for The New York Times and other media organizations before deciding to leave the comforts of home to travel to the Philippines as a volunteer in March 2005.
The Peace Corps has continued its volunteer work in the country despite Campbell's death. Kenney said 16 new volunteers have arrived in the country and were undergoing training.
"It's a huge honor to continue to work in the Philippines and certainly to be recognized and have the chance to continue the work done by a colleague who unfortunately is no longer here," Kenney told reporters.
