Sean Penn’s Haiti work gets Nobel laureates’ peace prize

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The Associated Press

Penn carries the belongings of a person displaced by the earthquake in Haiti. AP photo

Actor Sean Penn is being honored by a group of Nobel laureates for his relief work in Haiti following the country’s devastating January 2010 earthquake. Penn is to receive the 2012 Peace Summit Award at the 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

The event will be held in Chicago next month and is expected to draw such luminaries as Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Dalai Lama. Penn arrived shortly after Haiti’s quake and established an aid organization now known as J/P Haitian Relief Organization.

The group has provided schools, medical care and housing to thousands of people displaced by the quake. The actor issued a statement on March 19 calling the award an “extraordinary honor.”