The Bruno Kreisky Prize was awarded to Claudia Vilanek at the age of 24. Claudia Vilanek was born in Innsbruck in 1964, where she also attended high school. At the age of 18, she began working with disabled people at a school in England. A year later, she traveled to India and lived and worked there for six months in an Indian center for lepers. After the center became a nunnery, she moved to Sunderpore near the border with Nepal and began working in a newly founded leper settlement called "Little Flower." In addition to providing medical support to lepers, Claudia Vilanek also taught English and singing at the village school. It was in this village that she met Brother Christdas.
When Vilanek returned to Austria she founded the Association for the Support of the Leper Village of Brother Christdas. She began working to collect donations, which she sent directly to the village. Twenty-five years later Vilanek is still working for her organization, to support the village of Little Flower. In December of 2010 she visited the village again. In the last two decades she has raised approximately 680,000 euros for the village. Vilanek has also inspired new associations to help the village, including a program in which college students raise money to buy cows for the villagers. In February of 2011 the organization began selling silk scarves, the proceeds of which go directly to the village.