Arvada-based PeaceJam Foundation is a nominee for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize, Gov. Bill Ritter announced this morning on the Capitol steps.
Co-founders of the 11-year-old youth leadership program, Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, said they were flabbergasted by their nomination, made by six Nobel Peace Prize laureates from five countries.
“We are incredibly humbled by all of this,” Engle said. “We really are just two very average flawed people. We’re from Detroit. We’re the children of Detroit factory workers.”
PeaceJam’s mission is the creation of “a new generation of young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates.”
Engle and Suvanjieff, husband and wife, have worked with the Nobel laureates who nominated them and several others to teach youth that even those with humble beginnings can make the world better.
Since 1996, PeaceJam’s programs have involved 500,000 young people. The program has inspired more than 300,000 service projects around the world.
“The people of this state believe in optimism,” Ritter said.
Suvanjieff said PeaceJam wanted to find great role models for young people because of the “Paris Hiltonization” of contemporary society and the abundance of really bad role models.
“PeaceJam has made my city a better place,” Arvada Mayor Kenneth Fellman said. “I can see it in kids’ eyes.”
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 303-954-1276, or edraper@denverpost.com.
