Humanitarian Hero Award

2024 - Olivier Vandecasteele

Olivier Vandecasteele is Founder of Protect Humanitarians

Olivier Vandecasteele, Founder and Director of Protect Humanitarians Olivier’s humanitarian journey began in 2004 after a life-changing trip to Nepal, where he witnessed the devastating aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. This experience steered his career towards humanitarian work. In addition to his fieldwork, Olivier has held leadership roles in various international NGOs, consistently advocating for the rights and safety of humanitarian workers.

In February 2022, he was arbitrarily detained by Iranian authorities and held hostage for 15 months, with fourteen of those months were spent in solitary confinement. After his release in May 2023, Olivier founded Protect Humanitarians, dedicated to enhancing the safety and support of frontline aid workers, particularly local staff affected by violence, kidnappings, and other forms of abuse. The organisation, established in partnership with the King Baudouin Foundation, has begun offering critical support to aid workers in crisis, providing tangible assistance that can be life-saving.

Olivier’s ongoing advocacy has brought the risks faced by humanitarian workers to the forefront of global discussions. His efforts are pushing for structural changes that will ensure better protection and support for aid workers worldwide, advocating for policy changes that address the root causes of violence against those who risk their lives to help others. Olivier’s work is not just about responding to immediate needs—it’s about driving systemic change in the humanitarian sector to ensure that those who dedicate their lives to helping others are not forgotten when they themselves are in need.

2023 - Sofia Sprechmann

Sofia Sprechmann is the Secretary General of CARE International

Originally from Uruguay, Sofia now leads CARE International from her home in Quito, Ecuador.  She has worked in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, where she has worked across her career in support of some of the most marginalised communities; from domestic workers to sexual violence survivors.  Her commitment to these people saw her early in her career travel to 24 different countries in 24 months, with her newborn son on her arm, from Bangladesh, to Uganda to Bolivia and Peru.  

She later spearheaded CARE’s first ever program strategy which was integral to placing women and gender equality at the heard of CARE’s humanitarian work worldwide, before in 2020 becoming CARE’s Secretary General, and the first women from the global south to hold this position. 

Since then, she has led the organisation tirelessly through some of the most complex humanitarian disasters, from COVID-19 to the Ukraine war – leading always with empathy, and strong feminist principles. 

When the Taliban launched a decree banning female aid workers, Sofia travelled with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to Afghanistan to negotiate with Taliban leaders to have this ban overturned, while sharing the stories of women and the suffering of Afghans with the world, using her influence with donors and the media to maintain attention.

Above all, Sofia is a strong and outspoken advocate for aid reform and decolonisation.  She was a founding member of the Pledge for Change initiative, which she now chairs, and has spoken extensively at high level panels and in the media on the need for reform.  She leads a new wave of thinkers in terms of the future of the aid sector and is not afraid to speak her truth to power.

She is often referred to as the ‘heart of CARE’ and her colleagues believe that she deserves recognition for her tireless commitment to the world’s most vulnerable, and contribution to innovation and reform of the sector.  Through the programme strategy that Sofia championed between 2015 and 2020, CARE had impact on the lives of 81 million. Under her leadership and inspiration, CARE has also defined our ambition to contribute to impact in the lives of 200 million people by 2030 – keeping gender equality and women and girls at the heart of our work.

2022 - Dr. Mohamed Ashmawey

Dr. Mohamed Ashmawey is CEO of Human Appeal since 2019. Prior to that he was also leading another global charity and has dedicated half his professional life to working for humanitarian causes and NGOs.

Dr Ashmawey has served as a member of the Board of Directors of prominent non-profits, including Mercy International and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and as the president of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) from 1993 to 1998.

His energy and focus has transformed the UK NGO he took over as CEO in 2019 (Human Appeal) and today it is the fastest growing international NGO within the UK's faith-based charity sector.

The new initiatives he introduced to Human Appeal have allowed the charity to grow and expand into major new markets such as the USA under his stewardship.

2021 - Dahabo Abagaro Bagajo is a Midwife in Marsabit County, Department of Health

Dahabo Abagaro Bagajo, Midwife, Marsabit County, Department of Health

Dahabo is a registered midwife who works in rural Kenya to promote maternal child health and alleviate their suffering. Staying in rural setup where amenities like maternity is not available to all, Dahabo came up with a maternity home that acted as a shelter for pregnant women where they can access the services from antenatal clinics, immunization and child welfare clinics and reproductive health services under one roof at no cost.

Through her initiative of healthy mother healthy baby, her maternity unit has helped over 400 women give birth at that unit. Coming from a pastrolist community, most women tend to move with their cattles and camels in search of pastures and Dahabo made sure that through outreaches and mobile clinics, all pregnant mothers in her village were able to get the services they needed.

2019 - Jess Markt, diversity inclusion & sports advisor at ICRC

Jess works for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the United States as a Diversity, Inclusion and Sports Advisor. Jess has been changing lives by coaching wheelchair basketball in war zones and is notable for his establishment of the first women’s national basketball team in Afghanistan. He continues to transform lives with the development of wheelchair basketball leagues in the world’s most challenging contexts.

2017 - Dr. Michael Kühnel, Doctor at Austrian Red Cross

Michael Kühnel is a medical doctor who has volunteered for the Austrian Red Cross as a disaster relief assistant for almost two decades. He was in Indonesia after the tsunami in 2005, Haiti in 2011, and was the only Austrian doctor working in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

2016 - Dr. Cynthia Maung, Doctor and Founder of the Mae Tao Clinic

Medical doctor Cynthia Maung has dedicated three decades of her life to helping provide healthcare, education and human rights to poor people of minority ethnic groups. After the pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma in 1988, Dr. Muang fled Karen State where she was born, and opened a clinic across a Thai-Burma border in a dilapidated on the outskirts of Mae Sot. Starting as makeshift clinic with limited supplies and almost no money, her clinic now treats over 75,000 patients a year.

2015 - Sean Casey, Regional Director of International Medical Corps

Sean Casey was the first person deployed by International Medical Corps to respond to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Since August 2014, under Casey’s leadership, International Medical Corps has cared for nearly 2,500 patients in its Ebola Treatment Centres (ETCs) in Liberia and Sierra Leone, trained thousands of front-line Ebola responders, screened hundreds of thousands of individuals through its SRUs in the three most-affected countries, and provided ongoing support to hundreds of Ebola survivors.

2014 – Christian and Marie-France des Pallières, Founders of Pour un sourire d’enfant

Cambodian-based Pour un sourire d’enfant started when Christian and Marie-France visited Stung Meanchey landfill site in Phnom-Penh when on mission with an NGO. They were shocked by the conditions in which they found a group of children living there.  Upon their return to France, they spoke to their family and friends of the horrors that they had witnessed and so they decided to found the NGO in a bid to improve the education and wellbeing of these children.

2013 – Dr Jumana Odeh, Founder of Palestinian Happy Child Centre

Jumana Odeh set up the Happy Child Centre in Palestine to help promote the welfare and wellbeing of children with special needs in Palestine. Special needs is still an issue which is considered as a taboo subject in the Arab world. The model applied by Dr Odeh includes a training element for the children’s parents, teaching them how to care for their children. This is particularly relevant for this region of the world given that reaching a medical centre is often challenging in itself.

2012 – Dr Abbas Gullet, Secretary General of the Kenyan Red Cross

Dr Gullet began his work in the humanitarian field when he volunteered in the first aid youth service. That was just the beginning of his dedication towards helping others. Since then, he has helped to build the Kenyan Red Cross into the leading humanitarian organisation in the country, but has also gained recognition much further afield. The Kenyan Red Cross is even considered as one of the best performing National Red Cross Societies globally.

2011 – Janina Ochojska, Founder of Polish Humanitarian Action

Following some time volunteering in France, Janina felt a desire to bring humanitarian activity to her home country and inspire Polish people to care for those in need. Polish Humanitarian Action was born during the onset of the Bosnian War, in 1992. The small NGO was initially run out of a room in a private apartment, just several years after the fall of communism in Poland. From these small beginnings, PHA is now based all over the world, having helped with relief efforts in Haiti, Ukraine, The Philippines, Nepal and Syria.