2023 MBBI Awards! Recognizing their Caring, Courage, and Commitment to Global Peacebuilding
Mediators and peacebuilders in this community of practitioners at MBBI, work tirelessly every day toward building a “peaceable” world. The teams conduct analysis, design interventions, facilitate training, convene gatherings, and a whole lot more. It is time to recognize them at this time with a celebration of their work and a spotlight on their impact.
Congratulations to the following recipients of the 2023 MBBI Awards presented at the Closing Gala of the 10th International Peace Congress in Nairobi, Kenya.
Peacebuilder of the Year
Klubosumo Johnson Borh. Johnson Borh is a Liberian peacebuilder who has been a key member of the MBBI Sierra Leone project for the last 8 years, and is now the Team Leader. His primary peacebuilding focus has been trauma healing and psychosocial support for Liberian ex-combatants. Read more about his work here. Furthermore, Borh is a 2021 Rainer Arnhold Fellow of Social Entrepreneur/Social Innovator, and now a 2023 Youth Empowerment Fellow of The Agency Fund. He is a Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International.
MBBI Team of the Year
Climate Change Project. MBBI’s Climate Change Project (CCP) was formed in 2009 with the first COP gathering at Copenhagen. It is comprised of members from 27 countries and has three subcommittees. The team’s mission is to strengthen the human capacity to build peace and constructively manage conflict at all levels, local to global, related to the climate crisis. Please read this summary statement about their strategies.
Their consistent attendance at the Conference of the Parties as well as the Intersessions in Bonn every year since 2009 has earned them the reputation as the process experts! The team’s advocacy for the inclusion of mediation processes in Climate Change treaties and agreements has led to invitations by governments, Universities, and organizations to provide environmental consultations in Africa and Asia and develop climate education curricula. Over the last two years, they have led open space, dialogue sessions, workshops and presentations at global climate change convenings.
The Creative Arts Subcommittee focuses on the intersection of Arts and Climate change through poetry, physical paintings, and other forms of art.
CCP’s partnership with Adaptation Without Borders has led to several documents and convenings. AWB recently launched A ROADMAP FOR AFRICAN RESILIENCE (2023) to enhance coordination in addressing and managing transboundary climate risks in Africa. Further, MBBI supported their recent brief: ENHANCING COOPERATION TO ADDRESS CASCADING CLIMATE RISKS IN THE HINDU KUSH HIMALAYA (2023). Review these two documents and see the impact of this collaboration in regions across the world.
Innovator of the Year
Kate Ferguson, Kevin Kgara Rack, & Michael Osatuyi. This trio are all alumni of the MBBI ARCoM Project in Southern Africa. In 2020, a group of Rotarians from District 9350, District 9370, and District 9400 took the initiative to establish the African Rotary Community Mediation (ARCoM) Vocational Training Team (VTT) Global Grant with the aim of training 100 community mediators to work in communities in the three districts. From January 2021, a multi-disciplinary Vocational Training Team (VTT) will complement the skills training to lay the theoretical and philosophical foundation for the cohort of Rotary mediators consisting of 30 Rotarians and 70 non-Rotarians.
Kate, Kevin and Michael are dynamic, passionate and dedicated community mediators based in the Greater Muizenberg area of Cape Town. Their project focused on offernig restorative mediation circles for the Muiz Community Kitchen in Cape Town and carrying out conflict mapping processes with the Learning Seeds Network in the coming year. Learn more about ARCoM here.
Collaboration Region of the Year
MBB-Europe. Having been fully launched in 2021, MBB-Europe has been making immense splashed across the continent in the time since. They have a steering committee, two country-specific sub groups in the Netherlands and Switzerland, and have hosted several events specifically focused on refugees. Their largest one, in 2021, was entitled Refugees in Europe: Challenges and opportunities for global peace building. MBBI is thrilled to see the collective action of our members in Europe thrive as a result of the strong leadership in the continent. Our members in Europe meet monthly to build programming and project work throughout their communities.