This week Thunberg won the first Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, launched by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation of Portugal, for his environmental activism. In a Twitter video accepting the honor, he said the winning prize was “more money than [she] you can even begin to imagine. “
So he’s giving away the money. Through his eponymous foundation, Thunberg said he will donate $ 114,000 to SOS Amazônia, an environmental organization that works to protect the rain forest and also works to combat the pandemic in the indigenous territories of the Amazon through access to basic hygiene kits. , food and health.
The 17-year-old Swede will also donate $ 114,000 to the Stop Ecocide Foundation, which aims to make ecocide or destroying the environment an international crime.
Thunberg will donate the rest of the prize money through his foundation to causes that “help people on the front lines affected by the climate crisis and the ecological crisis, especially in the global South,” he said in his Twitter announcement.
Thunberg was selected from 136 nominees from 46 countries for the first annual award for his ability to “mobilize younger generations for the cause of climate change,” said President of the Grand Jury Prize, Jorge Sampaio, in the winner’s announcement. .
He received a separate award in May for his activism, and donated all $ 100,000 to UNICEF to protect children from the Covid-19 pandemic. The charity that awarded him the prize, the Human Act Foundation of Denmark, matched his donation and launched a campaign to safeguard the well-being of children during the pandemic.
Thunberg was 15 years old when he began to carry out climate strikes and eventually mobilized thousands of young people around the world to skip school on Fridays to protest the climate crisis.
In August 2019, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to New York on a zero-emission sailboat to speak at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. At the September summit, when she was 16, she delivered an incendiary speech condemning attendees for valuing “everlasting economic growth” on the environment.
Her activism has upset President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly mocked her on social media. He wrote that she has “anger management problems” when the news of her honor was revealed in Time, and sarcastically called her a “very happy young woman looking forward to a bright and wonderful future” in response to her speech at the Summit. of UN Climate Action.
Rodrigo Pedroso and Iain Smith of CNN contributed to this report.
