IofC Trustbuilding Awards Winners
Celebrate the winners with us!
Trustbuilding is one of the four key areas of work in our movement. 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.
The third edition of the festive Awards Ceremony took place on 12 November 2025 @ 12:00 pm UTC/GMT in Pretoria, South Africa.
... and the 2025 Trustbuilding Awards Winners are ...
Trustbuilder of the Year Award Winner
Puppets World [Jordan] - is 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>.
Young Trustbuilder of the Year Award Winner
Arbe Bonaya Godana [Kenya] - 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.
Lifetime Achiever Award Winner
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
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.
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.'
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
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”.
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.
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.