The president of AGT Food and Ingredients has received the prestigious Oslo Business for Peace Award.
“I guess I’m the first ever Canadian winner,” said Murad Al-Katib.
Past recipients include Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, David MacLennan, chief executive officer of Cargill, and Jeffrey Immelt, chair of GE.
“Some cool people have received it,” said Al-Katib.
The Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce nominated him for the award.
“We are thrilled to see Mr. Al-Katib receive the prestigious recognition from the Business for Peace Foundation,” chamber executive director Kent Smith-Windsor said in a news release.
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Al-Katib is one of four recipients of the 2017 award. A committee consisting of Nobel Laureates in peace and economic sciences picked the winners.
He is being recognized for the Regina company’s work with the United Nations World Food Programme and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
AGT has helped optimize the procurement, consolidation and distribution process for getting 4.5 million family ration packages to international agencies for Syrian refugees. It has saved the partner organizations millions of dollars.
Al-Katib estimates the rations have provided 700 million refugee meals. There are 62 million refugees around the world, 60 percent of which are women and children.
“It’s not something we only did for philanthropy, it’s something we did for business,” he said.
A “big concentration” of those rations are filled with Canadian peas, lentils and chickpeas.
Al-Katib said he is proud to be recognized with the international award.
“I want to be a champion of compassionate entrepreneurship, a world in which entrepreneurs harness their energies to help society solve some of its problems.”
Al-Katib will fly to Oslo, Norway, to receive the award May 16. He will be meeting with the Crown Prince of Norway.
