Human rights got a good name when Sonam Tshengjung Lama was awarded this year's Prakash Human Rights award. Sonam is from faraway Kamdi Khari village in Mugu district, in Nepal's wild west. Everything seemed perfect for the award ceremony until the monsoon played spoilsport. Sonam could not travel to Kathmandu to collect her prize because the helicopter from Surkhet was delayed in reaching Mugu, and then landslides on the Prithvi Highway prevented her from getting to the ceremony.

Sonam got the award for doing good in simple ways for the benefit of those around her in her village. Well-off by Mugu standards-both her family and in-laws have 10-15 yaks-Sonam is a good householder. She has farmed with her husband, taken the yaks to graze and even ferried goods for their little shop from as far away as Lhasa and New Delhi. In between she also found time for what she liked best: to help those who needed it the most, because she says, "I cannot stand the suffering of others."

By tradition, the elderly in Kamdi Khari were supposed to live separately, barred from participating in community activities. In a place where you're stuck indoors for up to four months due to the snow outside, this lack of mobility can be truly excruciating. Sonam campaigned to change all that and succeeded in bringing the elders back into the fold. Her next stop was the village council. There she championed the cause of the poor and those looked down upon by society. She forced the village elders to set aside foodgrain sent by the government for widows and the elderly, arguing that the handouts were meant for those on the brink and not those who had enough yaks in the household.

Slowly, Sonam dismantled the shackles of tradition in her village and surroundings. She helped raise farming wages, mobilised villagers to ferry pipes from Surkhet to build a drinking water system. "From an early age I used to be saddened every time I saw someone inflicting suffering on others," she says. The Prakash Human Rights Award is named after the Nepali activist Prakash Kafle who died in a plane crash in 1993, and is given by the group, INSEC.

Sonam told us: "I did not get to study, and I have to look after my elderly parents. At night I card wool and I get blisters on my hands. I've travelled to Tibet to ferry goods. Sometimes apples, sometimes potatoes, sometimes timber. From there I bring back salt, rice, tea, shoes, yak tails."
And still to have time to help others.