New York - UN Development Programme (UNDP) has won a Webby Award for their Dear World Leaders initiative - an innovative campaign aimed at raising awareness of the global climate crisis, ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.

It was voted ‘People’s Voice Winner 2022’ in the Activism category. The People’s Voice Award is selected by fans, who vote online for their favorite nominee.

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), recognised the best websites, podcasts, apps and other digital campaigns.

“The more voices that speak up for climate, the more powerful climate action becomes,” Cassie Flynn, head of Climate Promise at UNDP, said. “Through Dear World Leaders, we are proud as UNDP to be able to create space for these voices to come together. We thank The Webby Awards for this important recognition.”

Dear World Leaders was launched at COP26 in November 2021. It gave a platform to people from all over the world, who posted video messages telling decision makers how climate change is affecting them, and what’s at stake. They were messages of anxiety, anger, frustration and fear, but also messages of hope, and most importantly calls for action.

Over 250 submissions were received from more than 30 countries and territories, reaching over 18,000 unique users who collectively watched 105 hours of video content.

A truly global campaign, it included messages from Ruxi and Nora in Moldova, Ahmed from the Maldives, Andrea in Honduras, and even Canadian singer songwriter Shawn Mendes.

Dear World Leaders was created in partnership with Limbo, a Copenhagen-based digital agency.

This year’s Webby Awards attracted over 14,000 entries from more than 70 countries, and almost two million votes were cast by 500,000 people in the People’s Voice competition.