International advocacy organisation, Global Citizen, and their global technology partner Cisco, have announced that applications are now open for the fourth annual Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award – an award that spotlights a young change-maker between the ages of 18 and 30 who has taken an innovative approach to solving problems, and who has made a meaningful difference towards the goal of ending poverty in their community. The application period will run from 17th December – until 11.59pm ET on 30th January 2022.
Established in 2018, the Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award is an annual award that celebrates the significance that young people are having on achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and accelerating global problem solving. The award honours an individual aged between 18 to 30 who has contributed meaningfully towards the goal of ending extreme poverty through their leadership, dedication, and innovation, and includes a $250,000 prize paid to the organisation to which the individual contributes.
Candidates will be judged against five equally-weighted criteria, which includes impact, vision, catalyst, global citizenship, and technology innovation. If selected as a finalist, candidates will be judged by a panel of representatives from Global Citizen, Cisco, and esteemed activists and leaders in the international development field.
Whether they are helping school children receive healthy meals in Kenya, ensuring children in India get the health care access they need, or providing communities across Rwanda and neighbouring regions with clean water, previous award winners have proven that innovation and dedication can lead to dramatic change for a better future.
As the past few years have highlighted, young people are the influential, resilient, determined spirits that the world needs right now to defeat poverty, demand equity, and defend the planet. Whether it has been young activists calling for climate policy change, or defending their local communities against destructive inequalities, young change-makers have opened the world’s eyes to what matters most and have helped highlight what needs to be done to end extreme poverty.
In 2020, Rwanda’s Christelle Kwizera received the Cisco Youth Leadership Award for her innovation and leadership in founding Water Access Rwanda, a social enterprise that works to eliminate water scarcity and provide communities in Africa with safe and easily accessible water. By reinventing how low-income communities can access water, her organization helps provide the natural resource to over 70,000 people across Rwanda and in surrounding regions daily.
In 2019, then 28-year-old health entrepreneur Priya Prakash, was awarded the prize in recognition of her work launching HealthSetGo, an organization that works to improve access to health information, which has impacted the lives of 200,000 children in schools in India. HealthSetGo empowers doctors, parents, schools, and governments to make data-driven decisions about children’s health care, improving early detection and treatment rates.
In 2018, the inaugural award went to Wawira Njiru, the then 28-year-old founder and executive director of Food for Education, an organization that provides nutrient-rich lunches to underprivileged primary school children in Kenya to combat widespread hunger in the region.
More information can be found on Global Citizen Prize.
