United Nations honor 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. With this award, the United Nations recognizes pioneering projects every year that make a significant contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The awards focus on the diversity and commitment of people from all over the world who are working towards a sustainable future. Each year, a high-ranking jury of international experts selects the finalists and winners from over 5,000 applications and nominations from 190 countries.

At the award 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 in achieving their goals. This speaks directly to our hearts and led to this important award.

The award honors Plant-for-the-Planet’s overall commitment to protect and restore forests to mitigate the climate crisis and empower 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, we have been able to significantly increase our impact since 2018 by supporting numerous other organizations in fundraising via the renaturation platform and have so far contributed to the planting of almost 100 million trees worldwide. With the Forest Cloud, our free apps for forest protection and restoration projects, we also enable projects of all sizes to professionally document and manage their work.

“This award is a great honor for our entire team and all our supporters worldwide,” 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 donation, every hour of commitment, every action – large or small – brings us a sstep closer to our goal of a climate-friendly future”

The photos of the award ceremony are available for download under this link for your coverage of the event (photographer: UN SDG Action Campaign/Antonella Violante).

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.

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

The entire award ceremony is available at this link. From minute 39:41, the Impact Award is presented to Felix Finkbeiner and Gjenge Makers.