SE PA Peace Fellow Honored
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Editor’s note: Joy Charlton is Chair of SE PA Rotary’s Peace Fellows Committee and has successfully forwarded many candidates to the Program.
By Joy Charlton
Rotary Peace Fellow, Mohammed Fakhry
We are proud to report that Peace Fellow Mohammed Fakhry was recently honored by the Gillings School of Public Health of UNC-Chapel Hill, the highest-rated public health graduate program in a public university in the U.S., with the 2026 Irving and Joan Rimer award for "a student affiliated with Health Behavior who demonstrates academic promise, commitment to the values of public health, and engagement with diverse perspectives and communities."
Mohammed recently spoke at the day-long Annual Conference of the Duke/UNC Rotary Peace Center, the only Rotary Peace Center in the United States. Graduating Peace Fellows reported their research and peace-related activities.
Mohammed’s talk was entitled “Dying from Distance: Health Equity on North Carolina’s Farms,” in which, among other remarks, he noted the similarity of the lack of access to health care in rural areas of the U.S to what he observed in the war-torn country of Yemen.
Click on image to download program
His talk can be heard via this full-length recording of the conference, presented with this schedule. Mohammed’s talk begins at minute 39. A panel of the four additional Peace Fellows who visited our District in October begins at hour 4, minute 29. Their international topics included attending to children in armed-conflict zones; consequences of mass incarceration for family partners who also experience the prisonization; how active peacebuilders in conflict areas need support and might best receive it.
Anne Hansen from our SE PA District, engaged with the Rotary Peace Centers program for decades, attended the conference in person and describes it as having been “inspirational, compelling, and a tribute to Rotary International’s commitment to peace building.”
Reminder: Applications for the next round of Rotary Peace Fellowships are due May 15th.
The Rotary Peace Fellowship and the associated ten Rotary Peace Centers around the world are regarded as Rotary’s premier program for advancing its international commitment to positive peace.. Fakhry was awarded the Peace Fellowship in 2024.