December 2022 I received a Life Time Achievement Award in Peace & Education from the Visioneers Network, based in Canada. Their mission is to celebrate and showcase outstanding human achievement on a local and global level through a Web of Good Work and Virtual Exposition to empower Visioneers to connect, collaborate and build a global community of changemakers. Go here to see my profile in the virtual exposition.

On the International day for Peace, 21st of September, 2018, I received a prize at a Peace Symposium Invest in Peace: Young and Disarming (“Investeer in Vrede: jong en ontwapenend”). It was organized by a coalition of Dutch peace organizations* called “Peace missions without weapons” that is lobbying for civilian missions, instead of military ones.

There were three young people who received a “Peace Hero” meddal. Tayfun Balcik, who works against polarisation and racism with The Hague Peace Projects, and has helped start dialogue projects between Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian people living/born in Netherlands. The second was Daan Savert, who went several months to Northern Iraq (Kurdish area) and is an activist and theologist. And, the third one was me, Nina Koevoets, for my work with Towards a Nonviolent World! I did five trainings that I mostly self-organised and also did other peace work like volunteering in Palestine and India.

We all reacted with surprise to the title “peace hero”, but the intention became more clear at the symposium: there are war heroes and resistance heroes, so we want to introduce peace heroes! Thereby the meddal became a political statement and encouragement for everyone to work for peace. I hope it will indeed inspire others to do this, wether they get a meddal for it or not!

Click on the links to see the brochure and facebook page. (It is all in Dutch!)

* Peace Brigades International, Christian Peacemaker Team NL, Eirene NL, Vrouwen en Duurzame Vrede, Pais, and Burundian Women for Peace and Development.