The Hot Pepper has presented to Dr. Daniel E. Cassell its prestigious Man of the Year 2020 honor for his immense contribution to humanity and to the growth and development of the country during the year under review. The Certificate of Honor was presented to him on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 by a number of the paper’s staffers, headed by the Chairperson of the Vetting Committee, Georgiana Mitchell-Follay.
Giving a little background about the award, the News Editor of the Hot Pepper, Emmanuel Mensah, said on December 30, 2020, after a thorough in-house vetting and voting by the Editorial Staff, the Hot Pepper published a list of five persons worthy of achieving its honor for the year.
Mensah noted that the Man of the Year award’s standard was set for the greatest humanitarian achievement for the year under review, with emphasis on non-political and not-for-profit ventures and unpaying services to humanity. He said the process was though and challenging, but at the end the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Dr. Cassell Foundation was voted for. According to him, the Man of the Year award is the paper’s most prestigious honor of the year.
Presenting the Certificate of Honor to Dr. Cassell, Mitchell-Follay, said, “We are honored to present this certificate to you for your tireless effort to humanity and your contributions to the Liberian society. We hope that you see this honor as a motivation to do more in the years ahead.”
Receiving the award with a beaming smile (wearing a three-piece gray-colored suit), Dr. Cassell extended thanks and appreciation to the Hot Pepper family and expressed how happy he was to be the recipient of the paper’s 2020 Man of the Year award.
“I take this occasion as a very important one, because many are called but few are chosen. It’s a good feeling that my foundation is being recognized for the effort that we are making in our country in terms of giving back, providing hope to our people and assisting in our own weak way to help alleviate some of the problems.
“I found this to be encouraging, and it tells me that people are looking; people are paying attention and people do see and understand the good deeds that we are extending to our fellow citizens. I thank you,” Dr. Cassell remarked.
The winner of the paper’s 2020 Man of the Year, Dr. Daniel E. Cassell, has been involved with a number of humanitarian activities, which is earning him top-speed popularity among the people. On August 30, 2020, he officially launched the Dr. Cassell Foundation in Liberia, with the objective of meeting the basic needs of less fortunate Liberians and empowering the citizenry through vocational trainings, agriculture and skills acquisition, educational services and employment assistance. Currently, the Foundation is collaborating with over forty organizations to achieve its objectives.
On September 30, 2020, Dr. Cassell honored an invitation to serve as guest speaker at the Press Union of Liberia’s 56th anniversary celebration, where he handed a check of US$10,000 to the PUL as a way of empowering the institution to remain impartial and independent in its pursuit for free speech and freedom of the press. He then cautioned journalists not to join the un-informed and uneducated sympathizers in marketing and promoting warlords and economic criminals, and decried that, despite the atrocities committed against the citizenry and looting of the country’s finances, war and economic criminals continue to be rewarded with some of the highest offices in the land.
On November 4, 2020, Dr. Cassell instructed his Foundation to offer a cash reward of L$5 million or its equivalent in United States dollars to anyone who provides credible information that would lead to the successful arrest and subsequent prosecution of individuals involved in the deaths of the four auditors who died in early October 2020.
Afterward, he made personal visits to the families of the fallen auditors and committed to paying Gifty Asmah Lamah’s children school fees from kindergarten to secondary school completion. For Albert Peters’ family, Dr. Cassell offered a full university scholarship to the elder child and a full high school scholarship for the younger one who has a year remaining in high school. He immediately presented a check to the wife of the late Peters to cover the full payment for the first semester tuition and procure books for the elder child in university. In the view of the Hot Pepper management, there is no single person who has impacted the lives of the people and given back to the motherland with sincerity in 2020 as compared to Dr. Cassell.