Emerging Europe recognizes its brightest and best in Brussels awards ceremony

Individuals, businesses, and organizations from across Central and Eastern Europe saw their work recognized at Emerging Europe’s fourth annual awards ceremony, held on September 15 in Brussels. Some of the winners come from Poland.

In the Planet pillar, Respect Energy the only company in Poland that obtains and sells energy exclusively from renewable sources won the Green Energy Initiative Award.  Łódź was named the Business-Friendly City of the Year. In the Peace pillar, the award for Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law Initiative of the Year went to the All-Poland Women’s Strike, which has led a campaign against Poland’s increasingly restrictive anti-abortion laws, while Belarusian news outlet NEXTA won the Media Freedom and Responsible Reporting Award.

The Estonian Investment Agency won Investment Promotion Agency of the Year – for the second year in a row. Among the winners in the People pillar was Youth Cancer Europe, a community that is led by young cancer patients and survivors, working to improve the lives of those diagnosed with the disease, chosen as the Health and Social Care Initiative of the Year. The Coding School for Women, a Georgian NGO teaching coding to women and girls, was named Future-Proof Education Initiative of the Year, and Serbian artist Andrej Josifovski won the Artistic Achievement Award for Save Our Home, a portrait made from 4,000 plastic bottles in order to mark World Rivers Day. Slovenian NGO Ekologi Brez Meja (Ecologists Without Borders) took the Sustainable Lifestyles gong. The People-First Economy Award, one of six Prosperity categories, went to The East Europe Foundation, a Ukrainian NGO also active in Belarus and Moldova which invests in local initiatives to develop private entrepreneurship, public policy, and civil society.

Other winners included Sygic, an automotive navigation system from Slovakia making travel more sustainable, which was named Emerging Europe’s Global Champion of the Year, and the Social Impact Award. 

A number of individual awards were also handed out. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the de facto leader of the country’s opposition movement, was named Emerging Europe’s Public Figure of Year. VISA’s Vera Platonova won the Female Business Leader of the Year Award. Edita Velić, one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s youngest politicians, was meanwhile voted Young Influencer of the Year.

(WBJ)