Mel Duncan to Accept 2014 Hawkinson Foundation Honorary Award
We are very proud to announce that co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, Mel Duncan, will be receiving the 2014 Honorary Award from the Hawkinson Foundation. Mel is accepting the award on behalf of Nonviolent Peaceforce's unarmed civilian peacekeepers, staff, volunteers and supporters. Please join the Hawkinson Foundation in celebrating Mel and the other honorees.
(Published Sept. 22, 2014)
The ceremony takes place on Sunday, October 5th.
2:30 p.m. Gathering
3:00 p.m. Program
4:30 p.m. Reception
St. Michael's Lutheran Church
1660 W. County Rd. B, Roseville, MN 55113
Please RSVP to the Hawkinson Foundation at [email protected]. For questions call 612.331.8125
The following in an excerpt from the 2013-2014 Annual Report of The Vincent L. Hawkinson Foundation for Peace & Justice:
Mel Duncan: co-founder of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, on behalf of its nonviolent civilian protectors.
As a native of Iowa, Mel Duncan grew up in a family that valued hard work, education and giving back to the community. His first job was selling sweet corn - at age 5 - and every penny he earned over the years that followed went towards college. He enrolled at Macalester College in 1968 in the midst of the Vietnam war and became drawn to organizing and advocacy on a number of social issues. After studying the nonviolence of Jesus and Gandhi in college, he resigned from the Selective Service System and returned his draft card.
While working at a center for people with disabilities in the years after college, he helped organizing Advocating Change Together, the first 
self-advocacy group in the U.S. for people with developmental disabilities. He went on to serve as Executive Director of Minnesota Jobs for Peace Campaign. In 1987 with future Sen. Paul Wellstone, he co-founded the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action (which later merged to become TakeAction) to work on economic and social justice, the environment and human rights. In the early 1980s, he volunteered as a peacekeeper on the border of Nicaragua during the Contra war. He also helped organize Wellstones's 1990 senate campaign.
As a Bush Foundation Fellow in 1997-1998, Duncan studied grassroots organizing and spirituality in Oakland, CA, where he began to develop his vision of a global peaceforce. Working with like-minded co-founder David Hartsough, they inaugurated the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) in 2002, and soon sent the first peaceforce to Sri Lanka, site of a 20-year civil war.
"I accepted this award on behalf of our peacekeepers, who are living and working in violent and challenging situations. It is they who need to be honored.
Since then, the organization has conducted civilian protection operations in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Guatemala, the South Caucasus and South Sudan. They currently have over 200 people in the field from 25 countries. In 2007, NP was granted Special Consultative Status to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Today Duncan serves as NP's director for advocacy and outreach, focusing his attention on advancing unarmed civilian protection initiatives at the United Nations.
Duncan has received the 2006 Distinguished Citizen Award from Macalester College and the 2007 Pfeffer International Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. In 2008 he was named one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" by Utne Reader.
Duncan and his wife, Georgia, have eight children and live in St. Paul.
