Contact: Don Feder, 508-405-1337, don@worldcongress.org; The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, 815-964-5819, media@worldcongress.org

SYDNEY, Australia, May 17, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ -- At a special ceremony at World Congress of Families VII, in Sydney, Australia on March 17, Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse and Ignacio Arsuaga were presented with the first Natural Family Man and Woman of the Year Awards, and Babette Francis of Endeavour Forum and her husband, the late Charles Francis, were presented with the first World Congress of Families Lifetime Achievement Award.  These awards are presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to promoting a greater understanding of the centrality of the natural family and the sanctity of human life to a prosperous, stable, and free society and civilization.

In December, nominations for the Natural Family Man and Woman of the Year for 2012 were made by the Congresses' 37 Partners.  Nominees included leaders, activists, scholars, authors, parliamentarians, lawyers and researchers on four continents. The selection was made by a panel of 22 distinguished pro-family leaders.

Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank of Concerned Women for America. She is a recognized authority on sex trafficking, the United Nations, U.S. domestic issues and international cultural, children's and women's concerns. She twice served President George W. Bush as an official delegate to the United Nations (in 2002 and 2003). She has also served on five national task forces focusing on sexual trafficking, the abuse of women, childhood obesity, human rights and religious freedom.  She is the author of many books, including "Marriage Matters: Perspectives on the Priority and Public Importance of Marriage" (2012) and is a popular speaker in the United States and internationally. Click here for Dr. Crouse's bio.

Ignacio Arsuaga is the founder and president of the Spanish pro-family/pro-life group HazteOir.org (Make Yourself Heard), local organizing committee for World Congress of Families VI, May 25-27 2012.  He's also a lawyer and member of the Madrid Bar Association.  HazteOir has 145,000 members.  In 2009, Ignacio helped to organize two massive pro-life marches that drew as many as two million to the streets of Madrid to protest the expansion of legalized abortion.  World Congress of Families VI was attended by more than 3,200 delegates from 72 nations.  Click here: www.worldcongress.org/wcfnl/pdf/2009/wcfnl.0909.pdf  for a Leadership Profile of Ignacio Arsuaga in the November 2009 World Congress of Families News (page 5).  Read more about Ignacio at his blog site in Spanish at www.arsuaga.net or in English, click here.

World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs commented: "All of the exceptional individuals who were nominated for our first annual Natural Family Man and Woman of the Year Awards are well-deserving of the honor. Doubtless, many will be in the running for the 2013 awards." Jacobs continued, "We are especially pleased that the first recipients of the awards are Janice and Ignacio.  Over the years, their contributions to the natural-family cause can only be described as heroic, sacrificial, and inspiring."

Babette Francis of Endeavour Forum and her husband, the late Charles Francis, were presented with the first World Congress of Families Lifetime Achievement Award in special recognition of their extraordinary contribution to World Congress of Families over many years of service.

Mrs. Francis is one of the founding members of Endeavour Forum Inc., a pro-life, pro-family Australian women's NGO which has links with similar groups internationally. Endeavour Forum aims to enhance the status of the uniquely female and the traditional women's roles and to counter the ideology of contemporary feminism whose adherents believe there are no differences between the sexes and that abortion on demand will pave the path to equality.

Babette has been a leader of the World Congress of Families since WCF I, in Prague in 1997. She's a regular speaker at Congresses and a member of the ongoing WCF International Planning Committee which helps shape future Congresses. Her guidance and direction have made an invaluable contribution to World Congress of Families over the years.

Charles Hugh Francis, who died on August 14, 2012, was a distinguished barrister, former Member of Parliament and a long-time champion of the unborn.

World Congress of Families is the largest international gathering of pro-family leaders, activists, scholars, religious figures, professionals and parliamentarians, cutting across religious and national boundaries. World Congress of Families VII is currently underway in Sydney, Australia. Past Congresses have been held in Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw (2007), Amsterdam (2009) and Madrid (2012). World Congress of Families VIII is scheduled from September 10-12 in Moscow, the Kremlin, in 2014.

Specifically, the World Congress of Families seeks to affirm and defend the natural family by shifting the terms of certain key public debates worldwide:

1. From "The family as an obstacle to development" to the "family as the source of social renewal and progress";
    
2. From "overpopulation" to "underpopulation" as the demographic problem facing the 21st century;
    
3. From "the small family and voluntary childlessness as good" to "the celebration of the large family as a special social gift";
    
4. And from religious orthodoxy as a "threat to progress" to "religious orthodoxy as the source of humane values and cultural progress."

Click here for an up-to-date program of WCF Sydney 2013: wcfsydney2013.org.au/program.      

Click here for a list of highlighted speakers: wcfsydney2013.org.au/speakers/keynote-speakers.

For more information on World Congress of Families, please visit www.worldcongress.org. To schedule an interview with Larry Jacobs, contact Don Feder at 1-508-405-1337.

The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (www.profam.org) is located in Rockford, Illinois and is an independent, non-profit research and education center that provides sound scholarship and effective strategies to affirm and defend the natural family, thus renewing a stable and free society.  The Howard Center is the publisher of the journal, "The Family In America" and is also the organizer of the World Congress of Families (WCF) project which is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and inter-faith people of goodwill from more than 80 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Dr. Allan Carlson, President of The Howard Center.  To date, there have been five World Congresses of Families -- Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw, Poland (2007) and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2009).  World Congress of Families VI was held in Madrid, Spain in May 25-27, 2012.  World Congress of Families VII will be held in Sydney, Australia, May 15-18, 2013, www.wcfsydney2013.org.au.