2026 International Solidarity Award Winners
Steve Stewart accepting an International Solidarity Award. Photo credit: Michael YC Tseng.
During the 2026 Solidarity and Fundraising Dinner, CoDev presented three International Solidarity Awards, one each to our Cuban partners: the National Union of Education, Science, and Sport (SNTECD) and the National union of Public Administration Workers (SNTAP), and one to Steve Stewart (pictured above).
The National Union of Education, Science, and Sport (SNTECD) represents over 500,000 workers in over 13,000 units in the education, scientific institutions, and sports sectors in Cuba and is the largest union in the country. Members include university professors, school teachers, administrative staff and custodians at educational facilities, researchers, scientists, athletes, coaches, sports officials, and more. SNTECD was Founded in 1961, the same year that Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign was launched. SNTECD has been a partner to the BCTF and CoDev since 1996. Some of SNTECD’s projects over the years include support for SNTECD’s Centre for Documentation, Resources, Professional Development and Leadership Training (CDICEC), an exchange of curriculum specialists that has helped design a new English Language teaching curriculum for the country, and support for their National Conference and shop steward training program.
The National Union of Public Administration Workers (SNTAP), Havana Province Division, represents 49,000 workers in government, judicial branch, banking, and other sectors across 1600 units in the Province of Havana. SNTAP was founded as the first union of the Revolution in 1961 and, nationally, boasts 265,000 members. One of the most diverse unions in Cuba, SNTAP members include public servants, including municipal workers, state administration employees, and private sector workers associated with the public sector. SNTAP Havana has been a partner of CUPE National, CUPE BC, and CoDev since 1995. Projects supported through partnership over the years include steward training and occupational health and safety training for members and learning exchanges between Canadian and Cuban partners, with a focus on municipal outside workers.
For well over 40 years, Steve Stewart has championed progressive social movements and causes across the Americas, from Indigenous self-defense and land back, emancipatory pedagogies, fair-trade-plus to the anti-war cause. Steve’s activism is constant, deep, committed, and substantive. Through his many roles, as student activist, journalist, high school Spanish school teacher, co-founder of BC CASA-Café Justicia, coordinator of the IDEA Network for 28 years, Program Director and later Executive Director for CoDev, and so much more, Steve has consistently embodied solidarity in action.
Steve Stewart’s Acceptance notes
I want to thank CoDevelopment Canada’s board and staff for presenting me with the International Solidarity Award this year.
I was hired by Codev on a six-month contract in the summer of 1998 to organize a meeting of teacher and student leaders from around the Americas to analyze the impact on public education of the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to the entire region. 28 years later, I am only now wrapping up that assignment, so while I may get things done – I take my time about it.
During those years, I tacked on a number of other responsibilities at CoDev – Education Program Director, Executive Director, coffee importer for Café Etico, and Human and Labour Rights Director.
In my time with CoDev, I have had the great opportunity to work with labour, development, women’s and human rights organizations from across Canada, the US, the Caribbean and Latin America, and I can tell you that the work that CoDev does facilitating direct relationships between workers and activists is truly unique. Most non-governmental international aid is either donated by individuals to international organizations or by labour organizations through their national unions to international labour federation. But CoDev provides the mechanism for unions, locals and community-based groups to develop direct relationships with Latin American organisations working on similar issues, gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by their partners and learning from each others’ analysis, strategies and tactics.
I remember a large international teachers conference in Buenos Aires about a decade ago, that brought together donor organizations from Europe, the USA and Canada with recipient teacher organizations from Latin America to identify best practices in aid. After hearing from a number of experts, Fanny Sequiera, then President of the Federation of Central American Teachers got up and said, “If you want a successful model for solidarity, do what CoDev does. They don’t come to us with prescriptions and proposals. CoDev and our Canadian partners work with us on an ongoing basis, so we develop together what needs to be done and how to do it. And when they need our support, they let us know, and we act.”
Through these years, I have come to see international solidarity as what happens when people in different places gather their respective strengths to help one another to overcome obstacles in the path to the common goal of a healthier, more just world, where everyone fits and no country uses force to impose its will on another.
But we are in a time when the international rule of law is in shreds, and the regime in the US unabashedly intervenes in the affairs of its neighbours. In the past 18 months, this has taken the form of targeted extra-judicial executions in the Caribbean and Pacific, buying of elections in Argentina and Honduras, kidnapping a president in Venezuela, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, contemplating military interventions against Mexico and Colombia, gradually suffocating an entire people through the extra-territorial oil blockade of Cuba, and last December, even going so far as to release Honduran drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted in 2024 of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the USA, and hiring him, with Argentine and Israeli assistance, to run a disinformation campaign to undermine the remaining progressive governments in Latin America.
With a global network of billionaire-funded far-right “think tanks” bankrolling everything from anti-LGBTQ and anti-worker groups in Latin America, to anti-immigration sentiment in the USA and anti-reconciliation propaganda in Canada, there is an urgent need for effective direct communication, mutual aid and solidarity between civil society organizations across the Americas.
Under these pressing circumstances, the commonality of the threats faced by people in Canada and those threatening our siblings across the Americas is very clear, and grassroots organization to organization solidarity is the most effective way for us to join together and overcome those threats.
Although I will no longer be working directly with CoDevelopment Canada, I remain very grateful for its continuing work to weave different threads of struggle into a beautiful fabric of unified resistance.
Message from Nayda Elisa Diaz, Secretary General, SNTECD
I truly feel very, very, very grateful, thankful, and I want to thank Codevelopment Canada again for that symbolic award you’re giving us, for having considered our organization, the one I lead and represent, the Union of Education, Science, and Sports Workers in Cuba. For us, it is an honor, it truly honors us with much affection, and we feel admiration for you, and we feel empathy toward that important organization you are part of in that sibling country, Canada. And I would like to tell you something, that as our national hero José Martí expressed, to honor is to be honored. And for us, that award, the award that has been given to two union organizations in Cuba, that is, our union and the Public Administration Workers’ Union, I would like you to express it to everyone at CoDev, to all the workers who are part of that organization, to everyone who contributes in one way or another to CoDev, that this award is also yours.
That award, more than for other organizations, you are deserving of that great award for solidarity, of that great award for humanism, of that great award for empathy toward other organizations and people. Truly, you have, you all have a quality that, if you allow me, I have to say it, you have the quality of empathizing with those most in need. You should feel satisfied knowing that you are useful to other people and other organizations. You bring a lot of happiness to countless people around the world, offering love as the most powerful weapon in these very complex times the world is going through. You convey that solidarity which for us is a fundamental value that characterizes you, and you bring happiness, you bring well-being, you bring peace. So, with all that solidarity, you allow humanity to continue surviving in such complex situations.
Therefore, I want to express my thanks, thanks from the deepest part of the heart of the organization I represent, from all the workers in this sector, which is an achievement of the revolution, and to tell you from the bottom of my heart that we are eternally grateful to you, grateful for all your contributions, and especially grateful for always keeping us in a little corner of your heart, this beautiful and beloved island that is our homeland, our beautiful Cuba. So, a big kiss, my dear. I couldn't help but tell you, at least so that this feeling reaches your ears, which is on behalf of all the workers I represent. A big hug and I wish you much success, and I truly congratulate you for everything you do. You are tireless, you are true ambassadors of human rights in the world.
Message from Arisleydis Leyva Hidalgo, Secretary General SNTAP - Havana
Esteemed colleagues of CoDev, respected brothers and sisters in struggle,
At a time when Yankee imperialism is intensifying its brutal hatred and genocidal blockade against our people, receiving this award reaffirms our strong commitment to our cause and to the principles we defend through our social project as SNTAP -Havana.
The solidarity of our colleagues in Canada with Cuba is already historic. The glorious pages written by our people, with their resistance and demonstration to the world, already recount our awareness of the future we are building, and the moral responsibility we bear toward the most just causes in the struggles of Latin America and the Caribbean. Cuba is not alone; we know this, and we are grateful.
Brothers and sisters, neither the threats of war nor the attempts to suffocate these people will prevent Cuban workers from continuing to strive for a better world.
Thank you so much for all your love and unconditional support. Thank you on behalf of all the workers and members of SNTAP and on behalf of all the Cuban people.
A hug from Havana, Cuba.