A Crystal Award for Charlize Theron

DAVOS, Switzerland â€"The actress Charlize Theron and two documentary filmmakers received awards for their humanitarian work as the World Economic Forum opened in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday. Ms. Theron, who won the best actress Oscar in 2004 for the film “Monster,” was honored Tuesday for her work fighting H.I.V. among impoverished young people in South Africa, where she was born.

Ms. Theron’s appearance was a bit of a departure for the World Economic Forum, which had dialed back the celebrity glamor after attendance by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2006 threatened to overshadow the rest of the annual conclave.

Ms. Theron was decidedly low key and humble as she accepted the Forum’s Crystal award from a stage in the Davos Congress Center.

“There is an incredibl brain trust in this room,” she said, apparently referring to the Davos participants. “I feel like I’m getting smarter just by osmosis.”

Wearing a simple blue dress and heels, Ms. Theron noted, with some understatement, that she was often in the spotlight.

“I decided the best thing you can do with that spotlight is to stand in the shadow of something and shed some light,” she said.

The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project finances programs designed to prevent the spread of H.I.V. among young Africans, particularly in South Africa, which has 5.9 million infected people, Ms. Theron said. According to the organization’s Web site, charlizeafricaoutreach.org, the programs include mobile health services in an exceptionally impoverished region of South Africa.

The World Economic Forum also honored two other artists: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, a filmmaker in Pakistan; and Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist.

Ms. Obaid Chinoy’s film “Saving Face” chronicles the efforts of a plastic surgeon to help women disfigured by acid thrown by abusive husbands or other family members. In her acceptance remarks, Ms. Obaid Chinoy said the film, which won an Oscar in 2012 for best short documentary, had prompted Pakistan to increase criminal penalties for such acts.

Mr. Muniz and his work was featured in “Waste Land,” a documentary about the lives of scavengers at the world’s largest garbage dump, outside Rio de Janeiro. In 2011 the film was nominated for an Academy Award.