African Monitor (AM) is among the finalists in the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Action Awards 2019 for its project named The Citizens Report.
The selection process for the awards, which attracted over 2000 contestants from 142 countries, resulted in only three finalists under each of the seven categories: mobilizer, storyteller, campaigner, connector, visualizer, includer and creative.
African Monitor is nominated in the includer category, emerging among the top three in a tightly-contested category that had a total of 258 contestants, including 33 from South Africa.
AM is one of the three South African organisations among the 21 finalists across all the seven categories.
Founded in 2006 by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, AM is a continental organisation that champions accelerated delivery of a people-centred, action-focused sustainable development agenda in Africa. In 2017 AM launched the Citizens Report, an initiative that is now implemented in 10 African countries. The aim of this project is to empower citizens to hold their governments accountable for development delivery, and to monitor the implementation of the SDGs.
The work of AM has caught the eye of the UN SDG award judging panel of over 20 experts, who will select one winner for each category.
The category of includer is for a project/group that makes the most innovative and impactful effort to ensure that excluded groups become part of the SDGs dialogue and decision making in their community or at international levels.
African Monitor Director, Ms Namhla Mniki said it is encouraging to see the work that the organization is doing being recognised internationally.
“It is an incredible achievement to be selected among the best from the 2000 applications from 142 countries entries received by the judging panel this year. What excites us more though is to see ordinary people empowered to be active citizens! This recognition can only serve to inspire us to push even harder on the work we do around SDGs,” she said.
Category winners will be announced on Thursday, 2 May 2019 at 18h00 CET, at a ceremony to be held at the SDG Global Festival of Action in Germany.
As a nominee, AM is also eligible to win the UN SDG People’s Choice Award, which can be voted online by the public across the globe. From now until 1 May 2019, AM followers and fellow Africans can cast their votes on Twitter by liking and retweeting through the following link: https://twitter.com/SDGaction
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