RICK LOVE AWARDS 2023 RECIPIENTS
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 recipients of these 2nd annual awards. 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
To honor Rick’s work and passion, one award is presented to an outstanding peacebuilding practitioner reflecting the values displayed by Rick.RICK LOVE YOUNG INNOVATORS IN PEACEBUILDING AWARDS
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 or help them continue their work and to provide them with a path to living out peace in the way modeled by Rick.
LISA SHARON HARPER | Rick Love Peace Award
Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer, and activist, Ms. Harper is the Founder and President of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and common action.
Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair it All; Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat; Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics; Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith; and the critically acclaimed The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right. The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines.
A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms. Harper has also appeared on TVOne, FoxNews Online, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Her writing has been featured in CNN Belief Blog, The National Civic Review, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, and Essence Magazine. She writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.
Lisa also hosts the Freedom Road Podcast, cohosts THE FOUR Podcast, and authors her weekly column on Substack, “The Truth Is…”.
KASHA SEQUOIA SLAVNER | Young Innovators Award
At 24, Kasha Sequoia Slavner is the founder of The Global Sunrise Project and Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer of the feature documentary The Sunrise Storyteller.
Since its World Premiere at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2017, her film has screened at 61 film festivals internationally and won 31 awards. Kasha has been a filmmaker/photographer and social justice advocate for over a decade, as well as a writer, public speaker, and contributor to several publications, including National Geographic Learning.
She is a 15x UN Youth Delegate, recipient of the Kim Phuc Youth Peace Prize, Ron Kovic Peace Prize, a Diana Award winner, and Wonder Grantee for Sustainability by the Shawn Mendes Foundation.
Kasha is a member of The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; one of the Voices of SDG16+; an Ambassador for Youthtopia, Earth Prize, and Center for Responsible Leadership; a liaison of One Better World Collective; an Evolutionary Leader & Artist for Ecocide Law; an alumni of Yunus & Youth, Global Changemakers & We Are Family Foundation, and Global Youth Climate Network; Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies Trailblazer; Basel Peace Office's Pacey Award Finalist; a Commonwealth Youth Awards Finalist; and Leader for Tomorrow with UN Youth for Disarmament.
EMMA VAN DRIE-HEITRITTER | Young Innovators Award
Emma Van Drie-Heitritter is a first-year Master of Divinity student at the University of Chicago. Her academic interests include comparative religious texts, public theology, and feminist articulations of peace and security. She serves as an outreach and engagement volunteer for Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign and Al Amana Centre. In this role, she organized a “Faith Over Fear” training in Northwest Iowa that addressed anti-Muslim discrimination, enabling her community to speak out against bigotry and open doors for refugee resettlement and relationships with Muslim neighbors. She is currently a member of the Hyde Park and Kenwood Interfaith Council and serves on their Anti-Violence Task Force. Previously, she served on the Reformed Church in America’s Interreligious Subcommittee under the Commission on Christian Unity. In 2019, she participated in the Middle East Studies Program in Jordan, Palestine-Israel, Egypt, and Tunisia. Witnessing grassroots interreligious peacebuilding efforts between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank transformed her personal faith and vision for religion’s crucial role in peacebuilding. Through organizing, advocacy, and future scholarship, she hopes to pursue nonviolent conflict transformation and interreligious understanding and cooperation—as a natural extension of her faith in the Prince of Peace.