Ben Affleck Awarded as People's Choice Awards' Favorite Humanitarian
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice star Ben Affleck was awarded with the People's Choice [...]
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice star Ben Affleck was awarded with the People's Choice Favorite Humanitarian Award at the People's Choice Awards tonight.
Affleck's Eastern Congo Initiative helps produce grants and investments to support the Congolese people and the space to develop smart and sustainable economic and social opportunities.
Last February, Affleck testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the Congo's violence.
The award was presented by Amy Adams, who plays Lois Lane in the film.
"I can start by bringing some attention to this," Affleck said in a recorded statement. "Once I started to do that, I did some research into what was going on and realized there was more that I could do."
He said that he set up the organization to "make life better for the people of Congo." "The only way to repair that is not with some giant, singular solution but rather brick by brick by brick," Affleck added.
"We are so pleased to honor Ben with the 2015 People's Choice Humanitarian Award," The People's Choice Awards' executive producer Mark Burnett said in a statement earlier this week. "It highlights a different side of a celebrity and helps bring awareness to a cause that our audience can support."
On stage, Affleck received a lengthy standing ovation, calling the award "incredibly humbling" and thanking Adams for her warm comments, saying that he hopes to be in many more films with her. He also said that he wanted to accept the award not for himself, but on behalf of the full-time humanitarians he works with in the Congo and around the world.
"Sometimes the world is just a scary and terrible place and bad things happen and they're hard to understand and make us feel helpless," Affleck said. "The one way to combat the sad things, the terrible things we see, is to bring a little bit of kindness and show that our country is about reaching out to help our fellow man."
This year is the third time the award has been given out; previous winners include Jennifer Hudson and Sandra Bullock.
The People's Choice Awards is an awards show wherein fans vote for the nominees, categories and the winners. The Favorite Humanitarian award is one of only a few that are decided ahead of time.
