Inspiration Off The Chain
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I thought I was perhaps too jet lagged and more emotional than normal, but then I talked to other level-headed, calm people and found out that they were also moved to tears.
The emotional surprise wasn’t just created by the one-way surge of inspiration from the finalists, but also from the inspiration, gratefulness, and support sent back their way by the Zayed Future Energy Prize team. Certain members of winning companies, nonprofits, and schools were so thankful for the transformations encouraged by the Zayed Future Energy Prize team that their gratefulness flowed out throughout the crowd at the awards ceremony, and then deeply touched many of us.
Putting some numbers to the flash, the Zayed Future Energy Prize team noted, “Altogether, the winners of the Zayed Future Energy Prize have had a positive impact on 307 million people globally in the past 10 years. As many as 8.5 million people have benefitted from training, while around 27.5 million have been introduced to renewable energy solutions through the prize. Youth-supported sustainability projects have flourished thanks to the Global High Schools winners, generating an estimated 3 million kWh of renewable energy and displacing 2,372 tonnes of carbon dioxide in total.“
It’s hard to explain the inspiration that comes from deeply diving into these winners as well as the often equally inspiring finalists, interviewing the executives and students, and hearing touching story after touching story.
However, you can get a taste of it by watching the illuminating videos of this year’s finalists — approximately a dozen global high schools finalists, 3 SME finalists, and 3 nonprofit finalists. The winners of those categories are highlighted below in bold and via tweets following the video of the entire ceremony.
If you want to jump to specific sections of the 1½ hour ZFEP awards ceremony, here’s a breakdown of what’s in the video (click any of the items to jump to that point):
- Videos of all of the finalists (0:00–18:40)
- Beautiful dance performance (18:57–22:10)
- Multimedia presentations and words of inspiration from Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Alia Al Mansoori (the Emirati Envoy to the NASA Genes in Space Program), and others (22:10–27:50)
- Presentation from Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of State in the UAE, Group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and Chairman of Masdar (27:50–36:20)
- “Generation Sustainability” panel (36:20–50:10)
- 2018 ZFEP Awards Ceremony butterfly (50:11–51:33)
- 2018 ZFEP Awards Ceremony intro about previous winners and effects (51:33–1:06:20) — this is the section of the opening ceremony that got me and many others to tear up
- 2018 ZFEP Winners (1:06:47–1:37:00)