United Nations honors Plant-for-the-Planet with the UN SDG Action Award

There is reason to celebrate: on October 29, 2024, Plant-for-the-Planet was awarded the prestigious UN SDG Action Award 2024 in the “Impact” category. Every year, the United Nations honors pioneering projects that make a significant contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with this award. The award celebrates the diversity and commitment of people from all over the world who are working toward a sustainable future. Each year, a distinguished jury of international experts selects the finalists and winners from more than 5,000 applications and nominations from 190 countries.

At the ceremony in Rome, the award presenter Farhoud Meybodi emphasized that true impact does not come from anger, but from passion for the cause and is amplified when we support others achie their goals. This speaks directly to our hearts and led to this important award.

Plant-for-the-Planet contributes comprehensively to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including quality education (SDG 4), decent work (SDG 8), innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), reducing inequalities (SDG 10), climate action (SDG 13), life on land (SDG 15) and partnerships (SDG 17). A detailed description can be found here.

The award recognizes Plant-for-the-Planet’s overall commitment to protecting and restoring forests to mitigate the climate crisis and empowering young people worldwide to act for climate justice. Since its foundation in 2007, we have already trained over 100,000 young people in 76 countries to become Climate Justice Ambassadors. In addition, since 2018, we have been able to significantly increase our impact by helping numerous other organizations raise funds through the restoration platform , and have contributed to the planting of nearly 100 million trees worldwide to date. We also enable projects of all sizes to professionally document and manage their work through the Forest Cloud, our free apps for forest conservation and restoration projects.

“This award is a great honor for our entire team and all our supporters around the world,” said Felix Finkbeiner, founder of Plant-for-the-Planet, following the award ceremony in Rome. “It shows that joint action makes a difference. Every tree donated, every hour volunteered, every action – big or small – brings us one step closer to our goal of a climate just future”.

Other winners of this year’s awards include Gjenge Makers (Impact Award), “Assume that I can” (Creativity Award), Suvarna Raj (Changemaker Award) and Weather Kids (Honorable Mention).

You can watch the entire ceremony at this link. Starting at 39:41, the Impact Award is presented to Felix Finkbeiner and Gjenge Makers.