UN Honors Ellie Goulding

Singer, songwriter and producer Ellie Goulding has been awarded the United Nations Foundation’s New Voices Award in recognition of her environmental and social justice activism. Accepting the award in New York from Munira Khalif, U.S. Youth Observer to the UN, Ms. Goulding thanked the UN Foundation and revealed that in the New Year she will join the UN Family as a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Environment.

In a heartfelt address to an audience that included United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Kathy Calvin, President & CEO of the UN Foundation and actor/UN Global Advocate Daniel Craig, Goulding spoke of growing up in the British countryside where she was able to nurture a love of and respect for the natural world. She explained how her environmental activism has intensified over time through education and access to compelling science and contrasted this with the experiences of some of her global audience, forced to confront climate change in dramatic and traumatic circumstances. She promised to fight for the right for young people to access meaningful environmental education and to have decisive voice and role in their future.

Goulding remarked, “I am an earth optimist. Through the Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Goals the UN has provided an extraordinary opportunity for us to come together to create a positive future. At the same time young people today are famously some of the most inclusive and solutions-orientated thinkers to ever walk on this planet. I want to use my platform to amplify their stories, bring them into the debate and to help fulfill their brilliant promise as global citizens.” [Photo Credit: Diane Bondareff / UN Foundation]