George Soros deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the work of his Open Society Foundations.
Here’s a good video on the work of this network, which I had the chance to look at up close in Central and Eastern Europe some years ago while I was working there.
When the central totalitarian governments in that region began to collapse in the late 1980s a huge void in governance was created, hastened and filled in by an emerging and energized civic sector.
- OSF-supported book stores in most major cities supplied books, videos and other literature to daring walk-in customers — on democracy in thought and practice, historical and current, from Western Europe and America.
- OSF-supported radio stations supplied audiences with informative programs and interviews with pro-democracy respondents (I was one), news on current civic events, giving good coverage to the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
- OSF-supported scholarships, fairly easy to obtain, allowed students to travel to the West and learn first-hand of the work of democracy on-the-ground and bring those lessons home.
- OSF-supported grants stimulated the rapid growth and deepening capacities of human rights, community-focused, civic-minded, and social justice NGOs throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
- OSF-supported grants helped bring in other pro-democracy foundations to stimulate the development of community, private, and corporate philanthropy in those countries.
I don’t know how a Peace Prize nomination gets placed or gains momentum, but hopefully some of my readers do. George Soros deserves a Nobel Peace Prize
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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / November 16, 2012 / lightly edited November 1, 2020
