The Hero Awards has introduced a systematic approach that enables individuals to translate the United Nations' 169 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets into actionable plans using a sequence of seven artificial intelligence systems. According to CIO John Toomey, the protocol provides a guided workflow that combines complementary AI strengths to help everyday changemakers create maximum impact in approximately three hours.
Since 2019, The Hero Awards has recognized individuals and teams making meaningful progress toward the UN's 17 SDGs. With the emergence of modern generative AI, the organization developed a methodology to make heroism practical, accessible, and predictable. Education Director Amy Chang explained that outputs include a GPT listed on OpenAI's GPT store, a continuously refreshed Innovation Engine built with Google's NotebookLM, and starting in 2026, a group collaboration and mind mapping tool based in Microsoft Loop.
Sustainability Director Savithri Patel noted the absence of obvious pathways for everyday heroes to earn recognition for sustained work on planetary challenges. The organization created a process that blends human judgment with AI, moving ideas across multiple models to make them more grounded, practical, and less vulnerable to hallucinations. Patel described this as helping participants "Be the Singularity"—epitomizing the moment when AI begins to outperform human intelligence.
The workflow begins by priming each AI with heavily tested prompts to maintain focus on producing actionable, real-world solutions. Each model builds on the previous model's work, adding detail, clarity, and checks throughout the process. The current highest-performing sequence includes Meta.ai, Claude.ai, Copilot.microsoft.com, Gemini.google.com, Perplexity.ai, Deepseek.com, and ChatGPT (v.5.2). In practice, a single SDG target is presented to the first model, with outputs passed sequentially through all seven systems to strengthen and stress-test proposals.
Completed solutions are archived on The Hero Awards' Academia.edu page for others to study, reuse, and improve. Winners receive recognition across the organization's social channels, blogs, websites, and press announcements. Awardees also gain the distinctive privilege of conferring the honor on others who complete the protocol.
The organization reports that the process improves both final deliverables and participant skills. Patel explained that each AI has its own personality with different strengths and blind spots, and iterating across all seven models accelerates participants' analytical and creative abilities. A preliminary 2022 project revealed that for every 100 completed procedures, 29 participants produced content that gained traction in traditional media, 14 were quoted in academic or professional journals, 7 started NGOs or non-profits associated with their chosen target, and 5 founded startups.
Substack creators emerged as the biggest source for new insightful project participants in 2025. Chang described the initiative as democratizing planetary stewardship and human flourishing through enjoyable work using familiar AI tools that help people develop a global mindset making change feel both achievable and personally meaningful. Additional information is available at theheroaward.net and theheroaward.substack.com, while the UN Global Indicator Framework can be accessed at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/.
