Public Interest Registry Unveils Winners of the 4th Annual .ORG Impact Awards

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2022 .ORG of the Year and other award winners selected out of 947 entries for impactful work to inspire and support their communities

RESTON, Va., Nov. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Public Interest Registry (PIR), the people behind the .ORG Family of Domains, today will name the winners of the 4th annual .ORG Impact Awards, which honor and celebrate outstanding mission-driven organizations and individuals working to make the world a better place.

PIR will celebrate the winners with an online global event to celebrate and honor "Champions for Change." The celebration is available for viewing on PIR's .ORG Impact Awards website.

In total, a record 947 organizations and individuals submitted entries this year from more than 68 countries across seven award categories:

• Community Building
• Quality Education for All
• Environmental Stewardship
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Health and Healing
• Hunger and Poverty
• Rising Stars (leaders, under 25, making a difference in their communities)

The .ORG of the Year will receive a donation of $35,000 USD for an eligible charitable entity of its choice, while the other award winners will receive donations of $10,000 USD.

"We are honored to celebrate the deeply impactful champions for change who have won a 2022 .ORG Impact Award," said Jon Nevett, President and CEO of Public Interest Registry. "These inspiring organizations and individuals work incredibly hard to put their mission first, improving the lives of so many, and bringing meaningful change to communities across the globe. We are thrilled to uplift their tireless efforts and to celebrate their dedication to making the world a better place. Each organization is an emblem for what .ORG stands for, and we are humbled by the work of all the .ORGs that submitted for the awards, were named finalists, or are winning an award today. Congratulations, and thank you for being the best of our .ORG Community."

.ORG of the Year – Food Rescue Hero

Donation Amount: $35,000 USD

Purposefully designed to automate the time consuming and variable coordination of food recovery, Food Rescue Hero enables scalable impact on food waste, food insecurity, and climate change.

Since 2016, the Food Rescue Hero network of 14 partners in the US and Canada, and a growing community of 34K volunteer drivers, have diverted 100 million pounds of perfectly good food from landfill and mitigated 66.2 million pounds of CO2 emissions. With Food Rescue Hero, coordination between food donors, non-profit partners and volunteer drivers is reliable, timely and transparent, and yields greater food waste prevention and shrink real time data transparency and greater overall impact.

Leveraging human-centered design, the Food Rescue Hero app offers an elegant, encouraging and positive experience that's contagious and fuels the movement. The community of Food Rescue Heroes continues to grow and deliver at a 99% service level, outperforming commercial rates.

Food Rescue Hero is also the winner of the 2022 .ORG Impact Award for Hunger and Poverty.

Community Building – Kageno Worldwide

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

Kageno Worldwide's mission is to transform impoverished communities into places of hope and opportunity. They believe there is no single solution for communities living in poverty, but that there must be change across multiple sectors, to effectively transform an impoverished community. This is why Kageno works with community leaders to develop programs in four key areas of Education, Healthcare, Income Generation, and Conservation. Their programs operating in Africa address the diversified needs of each community. Kageno is a big picture non-profit, with boots on the ground able to provide the infrastructure, resources, and knowledge needed to develop education initiatives, stronger infrastructures for community health, diversified economies, and a healthier environment.

Quality Education for All – Hello World

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

Hello World's paradigm-busting solution to the education deficit tackles the twin injustices of lack of educational resources in remote and last-mile communities and the digital divide. Hello World is helping solve the lack of global education by working with the most marginalized communities to build state-of-the-art, Solar PoweredInternet Hubs and bridge the digital divide. Each "Hello Hub" provides free internet access and world-class educational software to over 1,000 people, giving children and adults an education and a voice in the global community. Hello Hubs are built by the community for the community across Uganda and Nepal. Each one provides everything needed to get online and further education.

Environmental Stewardship – TIP Sessions

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

TIP Sessions focuses on a combination of gender-sensitive response to climate change, and technological intervention with lingual and regional context to achieve climate and gender justice. They achieve this through a three-pronged approach of community-led climate action, culture for climate programs and economic empowerment of rural women. Their programs are action-driven and give local communities—particularly, women and youth—the platform and voice to impact their world.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Pro Mujer  

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

Pro Mujer has been working to advance gender equality in Latin America for over 32 years. It provides underserved women with financial inclusion, skilling opportunities and health services in order for them to reach their full potential, become agents of change and improve their living conditions.

Health and Healing – Limbitless Solutions

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

Limbitless Solutions Inc. (LSI) is a University of Central Florida-based, non-profit dedicated to empowering individuals by creating access for children—and soon adult first responders and veterans—to personalized, high-functioning and expressive prosthetic arms without financial burden, using technology and interdisciplinary efforts to address accessibility issues to increase access and inclusion. They work to empower confidence and increase accessibility in the limb difference community through art-infused bionics and combine engineering and art to promote access and engagement in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education for a more inclusive future.

Hunger and Poverty – Food Rescue Hero

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

In addition to receiving the awards for .ORG of the Year, Food Rescue Hero is also the winner in the Hunger and Poverty category.

Food Rescue Hero is able to use their highly functional app to reduce waste and deliver food to hungry people in 16 cities involved in their network. They have recovered over 122 million pounds of food, equating to nearly 100 million meals. This also means 66.2 million pounds of carbon emissions have been mitigated through their work.

Rising Star – Mathias Charles Yabe, AkoFresh

Donation Amount: $10,000 USD

AkoFresh is a green Agritech organization that is offering sustainable agricultural services leveraging climate smart solutions for improved food security and ensuring ecosystem resilience in local communities. The innovation for AkoFresh is a mobile solar powered cold storage preservation technology that extends shelf life of  perishable crops from the usual 5-day period to 21 days to reduce post-harvest losses and ensure improved livelihood of smallholder farmers. Projects implemented by AkoFresh prioritize the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions especially from food waste, conserving environmental resources, alleviating poverty in small-holders' farming communities by boosting the local economy, and creating decent employment opportunities for women and the youth.

The 2022 .ORG Impact Awards recognize .ORGs that make an enormous difference in their communities and the world. Submissions for the awards were reviewed and scored by a panel of judges who are leaders in the Internet, non-profit, health, education, and marketing sectors. The .ORG of the Year was chosen by PIR from the winners in the other categories. All nominations were required to be tied to an active website with a .ORG domain. Please visit www.orgimpactawards.org for complete rules and information.

.ORG is the original purpose-driven "generic" top-level domain (gTLD) with 10.7 million domain names registered worldwide. .ORG is open to everyone, providing a global platform for organizations, associations, clubs, businesses and individuals to bring their ideas to life. For more than 30 years, .ORG has built an enduring legacy of trust, preserving an open and secure Internet where diverse communities can establish a trusted online identity and freely share ideas. .ORG is powered by the non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR). PIR has been a champion for a free and open Internet for almost 20 years with a clear mission to be an exemplary domain name registry, provide a trusted digital identity and help educate those who dedicate themselves to improving our world. PIR was founded by the Internet Society (internetsociety.org) in 2002 and is based in Reston, Virginia, USA. Visit www.pir.org for more information.

Media contact: [email protected]

SOURCE .ORG, The Public Interest Registry