UNESCO awards World Cleanup Day with the Education for Sustainable Development prize

25.09.2019

UNESCO has named Let’s Do It Foundation for its international projects “World Cleanup Day” and “Keep It Clean Plan” as one of the three winners of this year’s UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development. The award ceremony will take place at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 9 October 2018.

World Cleanup Day united 15 million people across 158 countries and territories for the biggest waste collection day in human history on 15 September. “This has been an amazing shared effort of thousands of organisers and leaders who want to raise awareness and create a lasting change in their neighbourhoods,” said Eva Truuverk, head of the managing board of the Let’s Do It! Foundation. She added, “A massive cleanup action is the best way to truly engage people and bring the problem into focus, but we have always seen it as just a beginning. To truly solve the global mismanaged waste crisis, we need commitment and very clear steps from all parties.”

The other two prize winners were Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust (NaDEET) from Namibia and the Kalabia Foundation (YaKIn) from Indonesia. Each of the three non-profit organizations will receive an award of 50,000 USD. This year’s winners were chosen by an independent international jury from 87 nominations, submitted by the governments of UNESCO Member States and organisations in official partnership with UNESCO. The core selection criteria were the projects’ potential for transformation, their innovative quality and the ability to embrace all three dimensions of sustainability – the economy, society and the environment.

The UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was funded by the Government of Japan. The Prize was established by UNESCO’s Executive Board in the framework of the Global Action Programme on ESD (GAP), to showcase and reward outstanding ESD projects and programmes. This is the fourth edition of the Prize.

Further information on the prize: https://en.unesco.org/prize-esd 

World Cleanup Day: https://www.worldcleanupday.org