On November 20, 2025, nineteen grassroots leaders from across the city of Chicago gathered to mark a shared milestone: the graduation of the seventh cohort of the Chicago Peace Fellows. The Chicago History Museum was filled with leaders, partners, friends, and family members who had walked alongside the Fellows throughout the year, as well as those witnessing their journey for the first time.
At the center of the evening stood nineteen grassroots leaders, not as individuals completing a program, but as a community shaped by shared practice.
The 2025 Chicago Peace Fellows journey began on March 20 and unfolded over more than thirty Thursdays. What started as a cohort quickly evolved into a community of practice. Each week, Fellows gathered across the city to meet and learn from other grassroots practitioners. Throughout the year they learned how Imagine Englewood if creates safe spaces for youth, met with outreach workers at Enlace Chicago, and walked in the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Stone Temple Baptist Church. Week after week, they returned to the GATHER platform for insights and conversations that challenged assumptions, sharpened purpose, and deepened their relationships.
As guests entered the museum that evening, the stage was set. A visual timeline illuminated the entrance, tracing the Fellows’ journey from their first gathering to their final steps toward graduation. It served as a reminder that peace had been built deliberately week by week, conversation by conversation.
The ceremony opened with welcome remarks from Michael Henderson and April Doner, who invited the room to reflect on what this cohort had cultivated: connection over competition, collaboration without ego, and leadership rooted in community.
Graduates Christina Rice and Wanakee Trask then welcomed the room and framed the evening’s guiding theme: The Power of Collaboration. In a moment marked by uncertainty and division beyond the museum walls, Wankee reminded the audience that “collective power and mutual aid are not theories; they are lived practices”.
Christina echoed:
Throughout the fellowship, Asset-Based Community Development was not treated as an abstract model, but as something embodied week after week, grounded in abundance rather than deficit.
The 2025 Chicago Peace Fellows Graduation: Peace in Motion
The graduation program unfolded through three interwoven themes, each reflecting peace in motion across Chicago.
Community-Driven Social Change highlighted how investment in people creates sustainable transformation. Fellows shared how they built from what already exists: skills, culture, hospitality, and joy, inviting partners into a shared vision for citywide impact. Tyrell Shoemaker reminded the audience, “Across Chicago, the Peace Fellows model shows that when you invest in people, lasting transformation follows. By building on community strengths and strengthening collaboration, Fellows are creating sustainable impact.”
Connections & Testimonies brought the heart of the fellowship to the stage. Darius Caffey opened with deep gratitude for the journey they shared over these last 33 weeks: “To be in community with all of you, leaders, organizers, artists, healers, and bridge-builders, has been nothing short of transformational.” LoLita Canady offered words that became an anchor for the evening: “Everything we need is already in the room. Our communities are not empty but abundant.” She named how Fellows were actively using their personal, professional, and social networks: designing spaces for healing, transforming existing spaces into community hubs, connecting with community members through street outreach, and empowering young people to see themselves as leaders and storytellers.
Call to Action made a collective invitation in the room. Fellows invited partners, friends, funders, and family to contribute to participation through mapping out the assets in their communities. This is the heart of the fellowship, an embodied reminder that peace is a collective effort. This call to peace, impelled Fellows, partners, friends, and family to continue in transformation through a shared commitment.
Honoring Legacy, Sustaining the Work
The evening also held space for gratitude, remembrance, and transition. Former Peace Fellows Director Burrell Poe joined the gathering to honor and remember Bertha Purnell, a Peace Fellow alumni who passed in 2025. After losing a child to gun violence, Bertha founded Mothers on a Mission 28, an organization that supported mothers in her community who also lost their children to violence. Her life and work continue to shape the city of Chicago and Burrell called on the community to honor and celebrate her life.
A historic moment followed as Yusuph Masanja, a Facilitator of the Goldin Institute’s Global Fellows, formally welcomed the 2025 cohort into the Global Alumni Network, connecting them to more than 200 fellows across over 50 countries. This signaled to the Fellows that their work in Chicago is part of a much larger global movement, where grassroots leaders build meaningful partnerships rooted in their knowledge, skills and assets.
Finally, John Zeigler, Director of Community Partnerships, shared reflections on the Mutual Aid Collaborative, naming it as the long-term heartbeat of the Chicago Peace Fellows. The Mutual Aid Collaborative is more than an alumni network, but an active collective where Fellows remain connected, support one another across neighborhoods, strengthen leadership through shared learning and peer coaching, and pool skills and resources to build real community projects long after graduation.
The Next Chapter of Peacebuilding
As certificates were presented and the cohort gathered for a final photo, the shared understanding crystallized that this was not an ending, it was a call to continue the work
Though co-founder Diane Goldin could not be present in the room, her presence was unmistakably felt. Through a heartfelt letter, she welcomed and commissioned the cohort, honoring their journey while calling them forward into leadership, responsibility, and care. Her words combined gratitude and vision, blessing what has been built and inviting the Fellows into what comes next.
This cohort holds a unique place in the program’s history. They are the seventh cohort of the Chicago Peace Fellows, and the final cohort to graduate under the Goldin Institute. Their graduation marked a turning point, as the Chicago Peace Fellows prepared to step forward as an independent organization within the city of Chicago, rooted in the legacy of the Goldin Institute and committed to shaping the next chapter of peacebuilding. The room understood it clearly: something was being handed forward.
Reflecting on the year, Michael Henderson shared that leading the 2025 cohort reinforced a simple truth: the power of peace lies in people willing to show up for one another, consistently and creatively. Over the course of eight months, the cohort did more than complete a fellowship, they developed a way of working together that Chicago needs.
The evening closed with a question that lingered beyond the museum walls:
How do you build peace in your community?
For the 2025 Chicago Peace Fellows, the answer is already taking shape in relationships strengthened, narratives rewritten, and communities choosing connection over isolation.
