A Colombian Mennonite woman who empowers young people to choose peace in the midst of violence is the winner of the 2024 Michael J. Sharp Global Peacemaker Award.

Mennonite Central Committee announced the award on Sept. 21, the United Nations International Day of Peace. To protect her security, MCC did not reveal the winner’s name. In this article, Margarita Angulo is a pseudo­nym.

The award was created in 2023 in honor of Sharp, who was committed to peacebuilding. Mentored by local leaders, he worked with MCC partners to encourage armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo to disarm and helped members return to civilian life during his 2012-2015 term. While working for the UN in 2017 to verify human rights violations in Kasai Province, Sharp, 34, and his colleague Zaida Catalán were executed by unidentified assailants.

In a rural Colombian town, where Margarita Angulo enjoys meaningful relationships, lush landscapes and the joy of children, she also is troubled by the armed groups that recruit young people to join a life of violence.

Guerrillas and paramilitaries need recruits to maintain control of the territory, mining and drug trafficking. They prey on young people who have few job prospects and haven’t seen other ways of living or supporting a family.

The department (like a state or province) and the civilians of Chocó have suffered for decades from armed groups’ violence, murders, curfews, displacement and extortion.

Angulo, a social worker and Mennonite Brethren church leader, set up a church initiative to teach children about peacebuilding and living without violence. It started with children and grew to 80 people, including adolescents, youth and adults.

The initiative, funded by MCC through the Mennonite Brethren Conference of Chocó, seeks to “awaken the desire to live differently, to be peacemakers, to create ideas, to learn different ways of seeing, saying, doing and giving,” she said.

With women from her church and the community, the chil­dren spend two evenings a week learn­ing about peace. They practice peaceful interaction as they play, make art, create dramas, dance and listen to teachings.

“We try to support them from childhood, so that they grow up thinking that it is possible, perhaps later on, to form their own microenterprise, their own company and to have a plan for the future,” she said.

As they become aware of other opportunities, the young people are more likely to realize they don’t have to become part of an armed group.

“I have always thought we are not condemned to live under the oppression of armed groups,” she said.

Angulo sets an example for women in a male-dominated culture where women are expected to be subservient and stay at home. She teaches women about gender equality and preventing abuse, which is common. She solicited local government resources to start a project for women to sell their crafts and sewing.

“We have worked toward holistic empowerment of what we are and what we are worth as women before God and society,” she said. It’s important to work with the mothers of the children in the local church initiative because “if there is no peace in the family world, it is much more difficult to work for peace in a broader space.”

Angulo and her husband have raised four children who were not born to them. At church, she preaches and teaches to help change the mentality of people who believe those who are poor do not have a way to succeed.