Global Citizen Prize
A Listers with a conscience filled the Royal Albert Hall last Friday night for the annual Global Citizen Prize ceremony, honouring and celebrating the world’s most inspiring activists.
The evening was presented by music icon John Legend – charismatic and engaging but with a gentle humility and consideration for the very real and difficult topics at the heart of the event.
The ‘Global Citizen Festival’ started in 2012 in New York and has since become one of the largest, most visible platforms for people around the world calling on world leaders to honour their responsibilities in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and ending extreme poverty by 2030.
Global Citizen and Teneo, the global CEO advisory firm, have teamed up for a year-long campaign to get the world back on track to achieve the United Nations Global Goals by 2030. Working together with the United Nations, this campaign is committed to help end extreme poverty, and calls on governments, philanthropists, and the private sector to step forward, take responsibility for the goals, and provide the $350 billion needed annually for people and the planet to achieve the Global Goals in the poorest countries.
The evening was a world-class affair, attended by some of the biggest names in music, TV, and film, alongside some of the most inspirational, driven and committed activists in the world, all with a shared ambition – to end extreme poverty.
The night was a celebration and as such wasn’t without a healthy splash of glamour and glitz; with the list of celebrities lending their voices to the important cause including Connie Britton, Chris Martin, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Dakota Johnson, Jason Derulo, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Himesh Patel and Kal Penn.
Announced throughout the evening, the four winners of the Global Citizen Prize in the following categories were:
Amina J. Mohammed, deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations received the ‘Global Citizen World Leader Prize’, which honours an individual in the political or advocacy space who has advocated for and implemented policy changes that have actionably improved the lives of those suffering the effects of poverty.
Sting received the ‘Global Citizen Artist of the Year Prize’, which honours a creative individual or group using their platform and their work to create change not only through conversation but meaningful impact.
Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of Chobani, received the ‘Global Citizen Business Leader Prize’, honouring an individual in the business community who has combined business goals with positive human impact.
Richard Curtis was awarded the ‘Global Citizen of the Year Prize’, which honours an individual who has demonstrated exceptional and sustained impact towards the goal of ending extreme poverty.
The fifth category – the ‘Cisco Youth Leadership Award’, which was a prize of $250,000 to help the winner’s organisation to grow, was awarded to Priya Prakash, founder and CEO of HealthSetGo, whose mission is to ensure that every child in her native India grows up healthy and disease free.
AS well as awards, the audience enjoyed unforgettable musical performances by some of the biggest names in music including John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, Stormzy, Sting, H.E.R., Chris Martin, Raphael Saadiq and Jorja Smith.
It was a truly remarkable and inspiring occasion, not to mention emotional and heart-warming, and we probably weren’t the only ones to shed a tear or two.
For this one special night the magical Royal Albert Hall was filled with an uplifting mix of song and applause from all age groups and backgrounds and the atmosphere was one of creativity, unity and hope.
But the fight doesn’t end with the last clap. We are all Global Citizens and we can all help to make the world a better place. As Richard Curtis pleaded on the night “no child in this world is any more or any less important than your own”.
- The Global Citizen Prize Ceremony will be broadcast on Sky TV at 7pm this Saturday 21 December.
- For more information visit https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/
