What happens after a school goes phone free? That’s the question Larissa May keeps coming back to as phone-free school policies spread across the United States. Removing devices can shift a classroom’s energy almost instantly. But May believes the real work starts where policies have less reach — lunch, hallways, after school — the small, unstructured moments when a phone wasn’t just a distraction, but a place to hide.

When Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez announced this year’s Bezos Courage & Civility Awards, it would have been easy to focus on the scale of the gifts—$25 million divided among leaders tackling some of the most urgent challenges of our time. But something else was different this year, something quieter and more profound: half of the awardees were chosen for their work in neurodiversity.

Meet Rowen – a giant botanical puppet made of native plants, designed to travel through all five boroughs and leave permanent gardens in its wake. A blend of storytelling, climate resilience, and community power.

Wild Africa is using culture, media, and local voices to turn conservation from an elite cause into a movement rooted in identity and pride. See how this approach is inspiring millions across the continent to protect Africa’s natural heritage.

What happens when inclusion is treated not as a separate initiative, but as a creative advantage, an audience strategy, and a business imperative? That is the throughline of Kamala Avila-Salmon’s career and the foundation of the Kas Kas production company she is building now.

Rainn Wilson’s Soul Boom, alongside Shabnam Mogharabi and Ford Bowers’ Companion Arts, is building media that’s funny, curious, and emotionally grounded. 

When most people think about hunger in America, they picture food drives, canned goods, and charity. The story is usually told in terms of scarcity and shame – who does not have enough, and how others can give. U.S. Hunger is trying to tell a different story.

With the launch of Claude for Nonprofits, Anthropic – the public benefit company behind the Claude family of AI models – is putting powerful tools in reach of mission-driven organizations, with nonprofit-friendly pricing, sector-specific integrations, and a focus on impact rather than revenue.

When coconut water first started showing up in yoga studios and corner delis, it felt like a niche trend. Two decades later, the billion-dollar Vita Coco brand has helped turn it into a global category – while quietly building schools, training farmers, and planting trees across the tropics.

What if design was treated as essential infrastructure for change, not a nice-to-have finishing touch?

That is the quiet revolution happening inside Canva. What began as a simple drag-and-drop design tool has grown into a platform powering everything from grassroots mutual aid to national health systems – with a bold ambition to reach every nonprofit on Earth.

Over its first decade, Parks Project has donated more than $2.7 million back into projects in national, state, and local parks — and as it celebrates its 10th anniversary, the team is focused on turning even more park enthusiasts into active Park Champions by 2035.

When Henry Ludlam started his career, he did not set out to become the world’s largest facilitator of charitable giving. 

Yet somewhere along the way—between building donation APIs and mapping verification systems for nonprofits across 240 countries and territories—something remarkable happened: his company, Goodstack (co-founded with Stefan Greer), quietly built the digital infrastructure that now powers generosity on a global scale.

In an era where attention has become the most valuable currency on earth, one question looms: what happens when the world’s biggest creator decides to spend his on kindness?

That question is about to be answered through a bold new collaboration between MrBeast, the1 Billion Followers Summit, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, and the Varkey Foundation, uniting the power of creator culture and social impact in a campaign called 1 Billion Acts of Kindness.

Royal Enfield’s Build Train Race (BTR) began as a simple idea: invite women into one of the most male-dominated corners of sport and give them everything they need to thrive. It has since become something far bigger — a living proof point that when you design for inclusion, you don’t just change who shows up at the starting grid; you change the culture around it.

How do you protect a right that was never designed for everyone? For Hannah Fried, this isn’t abstract. It’s the daily work of making sure ordinary people can do an extraordinary thing: cast a ballot and have it count. Fried understands what it means for families to come to the United States because it represented hope—and what it feels like to watch that promise wobble. That’s why All Voting Is Local (a 2025 Elevate Prize Winner) was built to be present not just in election season, but in every season.

In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, a young barber from Fayetteville, North Carolina was giving out free haircuts on the street and posting motivational videos online. His name was Victor Fontanez, better known as Vic Blends, and his mission was simple yet profound: to show young people that any passion—no matter how humble—can become a platform for purpose.