the peacebuilding champion award

The Peacebuilding Champion Award recognizes members of the U.S. Congress who have led bipartisan efforts to recalibrate past approaches to global conflict management in favor of innovative peacebuilding approaches. This work is more important than ever as the world grapples with the compounding crises of conflict, COVID, and climate change.

2023 Recipients

Local Peacebuilder Award

The Local Peacebuilder Award recognizes efforts to build connection and inclusion in the context of armed conflict, indispensable leadership around building transnational connections and solidarity, support of those suffering abuses and trauma, and direct engagement with government and other institutional actors.

2023 Recipients

View the press release here.

Melanie Greenberg Award

The Melanie Greenberg Award recognizes individuals and organizations making positive peacebuilding contributions to address the worsening conflict dynamics in the United States. The award is named after and presented by Humanity United’s Managing Director, Peacebuilding, Melanie Greenberg, and was established in 2018 to highlight individuals and organizations working to address increasing dynamics of conflict and instability in the United States, signifying the need for and importance of peacebuilding efforts at the community and national level. Greenberg previously served as AfP’s President and CEO.

2023 Recipient

D.G. Mawn
President, National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM)

NAFCM, founded in the wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, serves as a hub to support community mediators in creating safe spaces for the transformation of conflict to opportunities for engagement, resolution, and partnership with the goal of uniting divided communities. Mawn has served as NAFCM’s President since 2014, guiding NAFCM’s Learning Community and focusing on veterans, law enforcement, immigrants, foster care, the older adult, housing insecurity, formerly incarcerated adults, young adults and community cohesion and security.

As Greenberg said when presenting the award, “I am deeply honored that D.G. Mawn has been chosen as the recipient of the 2023 Melanie Greenberg award. Drawing on NAFCM’s roots in the Civil Rights Movement, D.G. has ensured that peace and justice never walk far apart during a time of deep polarization and upheaval in the United States. D.G. has been a brilliant, patient, creative force for change in communities across every region of the country, and has started to build a compelling and inclusive national vision and infrastructure for peace. D.G. embodies all that it means to be a peacebuilder, in the most courageous and visionary senses of the word.”

View the press release here.

Rick Love Award

AfP is proud to honor the memory and lifelong peacebuilding achievements of Rick Love by hosting the annual Rick Love Peace Awards at PeaceCon with Peace Catalyst International.

Dr. Rick Love, the late Founder and President of Peace Catalyst International, dreamed of mobilizing people around the globe into a peacebuilding movement. Everyone who knew him knew this was his passion and that he worked tirelessly toward it. He founded Peace Catalyst because of that dream and dedicated the last ten years of his life to peacebuilding, courageously crossing social, political, and ideological divides and inviting others to do the same. He did so because of his Jesus-centered approach to all of life.

To honor Rick’s legacy, to further his vision, and to raise up more peacebuilders like him, Peace Catalyst has established the Rick Love Peace Awards and is proud to present the very first recipients. These prestigious awards honor those who creatively cross divides to build peace, exhibiting the same character and courage displayed by Rick.

• Rick Love Peace Award
  Rick was deeply concerned about the deteriorating narratives surrounding Muslims in the United States and globally, and to honor his work and passion, as well as the roots of Peace Catalyst International, two awards are presented to outstanding individuals working specifically among Christians and Muslims.

• Rick Love Young Innovators in Peacebuilding Award
  Rick cared deeply about young people and wanted a new generation of peacebuilders to be raised up after him. We therefore present two awards to young people to jumpstart their work and provide them with a path to living out peace in the way modeled by Rick.

2023 Recipients

Past Award Recipients

Peacebuilding Champion Award

2021
Rep. John Curtis (R-UT)
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY)

2020
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

2019
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)

Melanie Greenberg Award

2021
Patricia Shafer, Executive Director, NewGen Peacebuilders and Youth & Peace in Action; AfP Senior Fellow for Peace Education
Jesse Morton, (posthumous award), former Jihadist extremist; Co-Founder, Parallel Networks

2020
Shelly Marc, Civic Engagement and Racial Justice Public Policy Manager, Instagram 
Joe Bubman, Executive Director, Urban Rural Action

 2019 
Bria Smith, Milwaukee Youth Council and March for Our Lives 
Hamse Warfa, Deputy Commissioner for Workforce Development, The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) for Minnesota
Donna Minter, Founder, Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute

 2018
Hands Across the Hills  

Local Peacebuilding Award

2021
Velma Šarić, Founder and President, Post-Conflict Research Center