IofC Trustbuilding Awards Winners

Trustbuilding is one of the four key areas of work in our movement. Working across many divides in 14 countries over the past six years has shaped the journey of the international Trustbuilding programme.

The IofC Annual Lecture and Trustbuilding Awards recognize individuals and organizations who have contributed to building trust in their communities and countries. In acknowledging them we hope to highlight the importance of this work of healing and reconciliation, which is the heart of our mission in Initiatives of Change.

On 12 November, Initiatives of Change celebrated the third edition of the Annual Lecture and Trustbuilding Awards at the University of South Africa (Unisa) in Pretoria.

Three Awards - Trustbuilder of the Year, Lifetime Achiever and Young Trustbuilder of the Year - were presented to individuals who showed outstanding courage, passion and persistence in tackling the social divides that they addressed.

... and the 2025 Trustbuilding Awards Winners are ...

Trustbuilder of the Year Award

2025 Trustbuilder of the Year - Puppets World Jordan

Puppets World [Jordan] - Ban Khalil and Rami Bader

This an organization dedicated to global leadership in edutainment, utilizing interactive puppet theater, engaging workshops, and innovative projects to discuss cultural, emotional, social, and environmental issues, while promoting diversity and inclusivity. It uses puppetry and storytelling to bridge divides among children from diverse backgrounds, including refugees, children with disabilities and marginalized communities.

As Jordan’s first-of-its-kind initiative, we aim to captivate young minds, ensuring every child feels seen, heard, and empowered. Learn more about the winners at <puppetsworldjo.com>.

The Trustbuilder of the year Award went to a unique project in Jordan, Puppets World, founded by a husband and wife duo, Rami Bader and Ban Khalil. This unique initiative is focused on child development, specifically on the refugee children of the many nationalities in Jordan.

What was the inspiration for Puppets World?

"In Jordan we have more than 57 nationalities of refugees," explains Ban. "So, me and Rami thought, why not create a safe place for all these children to gather and to act with each other, get to know each other more, regardless of their nationality, of their color, or of their disability.

"So, we created Puppets World for development of children, a place where we gather children and present awareness puppet shows for them, covering emotional, cultural, environmental and social issues."

And the significance of getting the international Trustbuilder of the Year Award?

Says Ban: "This award is going to strengthen our trust, strengthen the trust of the community with our work and also strengthen our relation with our partners. I want to thank our partners who believe in our work in Jordan and in the Middle East."

Future plans and the vision for the next five years?

Ban and Rami plan to expand their work to two new countries in the Middle East, introduce new forms of puppetry like MAR and shadow puppets, and create puppet kits for children to use as creative tools for self-expression.

"We are going to make puppet kits for children so they can create their own puppet show," says Ban, "and help them use such shows as a creative tool to express themselves."

Young Trustbuilder of the Year Award

2025 TB Awards Winner Young T-Builder of the Year

Arbe Bonaya Godana [Kenya]

Arbe is a passionate community leader, peace advocate, and founder of Nutokuma CBO, a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting culture, gender equity, youth empowerment, and peaceful coexistence in Northern Kenya.

Born and raised in Forole, Marsabit County, Arbe hails from the Gabra community, a pastoralist society rich in tradition but historically marginalized economically, socially, and affected by recurring inter-community conflict. From her earliest days in the village classroom, Arbe saw education not just as personal liberation, but as a tool to uplift her entire community.

Driven by this vision, she founded Nutokuma CBO to confront the systemic challenges women and youth face, including cultural discrimination, gender-based violence, and the effects of climate change. One of Nutokuma’s recent milestones was organizing a powerful African Child Day celebration, which combined advocacy for children’s right to education with acts of compassion, providing basic school supplies to vulnerable students while promoting peace and unity.

The Young Trustbuilder of the Year Award went to a young Kenyan woman, Arbe Bonyaya Gadana, who, among other initiatives, uses her indigenous cultural heritage to address vital issues that marginalise women and youth in the north of Kenya, specifically gender inequality, female genital mutilation and early marriage.

The inspiration and motivation behind her work?

The intercommunity conflict and its devastating impact on the pastoralist community in Kenya.

"Since I was young, I saw many people being deeply displaced." Arbe said. "Many people lost their lives. And one of the incidents happened in 2019 while I was a student by then. The incident where many people were killed and I then visited the hospital, a 5-year-old almost killed and had a bullet on his sight and found him crying, and I was told that his mommy was among the people were killed."

As a way of dealing with this, Arbe started a community-based organization called 'Utokuma' ('we are one').

And the significance of getting this Award?

Arbe says it is recognition of her hard work and that of many young people and it carries forward the dream of healing and creating a sense of value and respect among her people.

"As I stand here, I'm representing or carrying my village with me," she adds. "Their pain, their suffering and their dreams."

Her future plans and vision for the next five years?

Arbe sees Utokuma growing from a local Community-based Organisation to an international one with a focus on building trust, fostering unity where there is division and addressing harmful cultural practices.

"Doing as Initiatives of Change does and giving hope when hope has died," she says.

Lifetime Achiever Award

Niketu Iralu [India/ Nagaland]

Niketu's has been a voice of moral and spiritual authority and of sanity in a region that has seen great strife and violence. People of every conceivable group, generation and across every boundary trust, respect and turn to him. The part of South Asia - an area of amazing ethnic diversity, but also known for conflict - that Niketu Iralu belongs to, is Nagaland in the Northeast region where India, China, Myanmar converge. Niketu's people belong to the Tibeto-Burmese family of tribes.

"Kerunyu Ki" or "house of listening" - Niketu and his wife Christine's home for the last many years - is the go-to place where all kinds of people turn up to reflect, seek hope, inspiration, encouragement, wisdom and strength for the very difficult situations they come from, knowing that they will be heard, and their pain will be shared.

From the mid-1950s Niketu, who will turn 90 this year, served selflessly on every continent with Moral Re-Armament/Initiatives of Change. While reaching out to humanity, he also remained committed to his own people, their aspirations and identity, and true to his convictions and his conscience.

Revenge-seeking, hatred, prejudice are issues that he has addressed. “Change hate and you change history” – says Niketu, and that is what he has been attempting to do for much of his life.

Niketu, while sharing the struggles of his own people, has also believed that speaking the truth to one’s own side, confronting one's own mistakes, is essential for healing deep divisions, helping build bridges with the “other”.

In an interview with an Assamese daily Amar Asom, Niketu said: "Soon after joining MRA, I came across Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth. I couldn't put it down... I saw that Marxism, though monumentally important for understanding the injustices of history, to change those injustices it needed to include the changing of human nature in its program.

I was deeply challenged by Gandhi's definition of his position: 'The still small voice is the only tyrant to whom I bend my knees' - is the missing factors in revolutions of the left and the right."

2024 Trustbuilding Awards Winners

Trustbuilding Award of the Year 2024

May Thu Ne Win, Myanmar

May Thu Ne Win, a woman who truly demonstrates all the qualities that this award seeks to showcase.

Against a backdrop of decades of ethnic conflict, exacerbated by brutalities committed by the military in Myanmar, which have made immense gender inequality and violence against women the norm, her work facilitates initiatives that raise the voices of women in the community, and that empower them to step into roles of leadership and advocacy to bridge ethnic and gender divides and advocate for peace and trustbuilding. ‘To be here, I'm not just representing myself,’ said Thu Ne Win. ‘I'm representing all the ethnic women in my country, because they all suffer but have so much resilience and dedication for our community.'

Young Trustbuilder of the Year Award 2024

Pascal Biruru, Democratic Republic of Congo

Pascal Biruru, an inspirational young man, for his impactful work in the education sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Biruru’s project, League Academia, seeks to transform the ‘multifaceted inequalities and exclusions that plague the Congolese academic sector.’ These injustices create a climate of tension and mistrust, and they prevent students from realizing their full potential.

We particularly appreciated Pascal's role as a youth leader, mobilizing thousands of young people to transform the culture of the education sector, bringing together stakeholders to target the issues of exclusion and inequality that impose barriers to the lives of many in DRC.

Lifetime Achiever Award 2024

Jo Berry, Northen Irland

Jo Berry for her deep commitment to healing and building bridges over the last 25 years.

The legacy of Berry's work is now in many communities beyond Northern Ireland where her personal story began. Her work integrates many aspects that are at the core of trustbuilding — transcending divides between different tribes and religions, changing narratives around conflict, and working from a place of deep individual vulnerability and commitment. ‘To get this honor means the world to me, because it means I can have more strength to carry on,’ said Berry. ‘Because I haven’t finished.’

2023 Trustbuilding Awards Winners

Young Trustbuilder Award of the Year 2023

Mumbere Sivihwa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Mumbere is a professional dedicated to results-oriented leadership. His area of expertise is the management and administration of peace, governance, security, and sustainable development projects.

He has extensive experience in the process of socio-political engagement of young people, women's empowerment and participatory advocacy for the reduction of violence in the African Great Lakes region and the Sahel zone. He is currently Executive Director of the non-governmental organization JAMAA Great Lakes (JGL) active on issues of peacebuilding, mediation, inclusive governance, and participatory democracy in the Great Lakes region.

Sivihwa has worked with regional, national organizations and local structures of African civil societies including, universities, associations, social movements, media, unions, etc. His work is constantly based on these words of Nelson Mandela “Take it upon yourself, wherever you live, to give joy and hope to those around you”.

Trustbuilding Award of the Year 2023

Wadiaa Khoury, Lebanon

Wadiaa is Associate Professor at the Faculties of Education of the Lebanese University and Universite Saint-Joseph. Her teaching and research focus on the Lebanese education system and citizenship education.

Through her work with Initiatives of Change she has studied the education system of more than 20 countries and observed their approaches to citizenship education.

She initiated the Teachers Agents of Social Change (TASC) in Lebanon. Her aim is to empower educators and help them discover their agency in shaping national policy, rather than suffering the consequences of the poor governance that has led the country into despair.

Lifetime Achiever Award 2023

Jean Brown, Australia

Jean Brown is the President of the International Committee of Creators of Peace, a women-led global network which works to build resilient and hospitable communities.
As a young woman Jean intended to study medicine, but chose instead to devote herself to Initiatives of Change.

She has done this work full time for five decades, including many years in India and the US, pioneering projects such as the leadership programme Action for Life in India, and working with gang members in Los Angeles.

Jean has made several visits to South Sudan to support reconciliation initiatives there. She has been involved with Creators of Peace since its earliest days and designed its main tool, Creators of Peace Circles, which have taken place in over 50 countries on six continents over the last 25 years.

In Australia, Jean has been active in many initiatives to advance reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. She is an inspiring teacher and trainer, introducing many to the joys and challenges of spiritual life. Above all, Jean has been a treasured friend to countless people.