Greta Thunberg to donate one million euros in award money to green groups

Teen Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said she will be donating one million euros in prize money she was awarded to different projects aimed at fighting the climate crisis. 

Thunberg said Monday she had won the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity and will donate the prize money through her foundation. 

“The prize money which is one million euros, that is more money than I can even begin to imagine, all the prize money will be donated through my foundation to different organizations and projects who are working to help people on the frontlines affected by the climate crisis and ecological crisis especially in the global South,” Thunberg said in a video posted to Twitter. “Also to help organizations and projects who are fighting for a sustainable world and who are fighting to defend nature and the natural world.”

I’m extremely honoured to receive the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. We’re in a climate emergency, and my foundation will as quickly as possible donate all the prize money of 1 million Euros to support … ->
1/3 pic.twitter.com/Eti6AJXSvj

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 20, 2020

The donations will start with 100,000 euros to the SOS Amazon Campaign, led by Fridays For Future Brazil, to tackle COVID-19 in the Amazon, and 100,000 to the Stop Ecocide Foundation to support the foundation’s work to make ecocide an international crime, Thunberg tweeted. 

Jorge Sampaio, chair of the grand jury of the Gulbenkian Foundation prize, emphasized Thunberg’s ability to “mobilize younger generations for the cause of climate change and her tenacious struggle to alter a status quo that persists,” in a statement announcing she had been awarded the prize. 

Those qualities, Sampaio said, make “her one of the most remarkable figures of our days.”