The Hero Awards has introduced a systematic approach enabling everyday individuals to contribute meaningfully to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals through a guided seven-step workflow utilizing multiple artificial intelligence systems. According to Chief Information Officer John Toomey, this methodology allows participants with approximately three hours of available time to translate each of the UN's 169 SDG targets into practical action plans by leveraging complementary AI strengths.
Since 2019, The Hero Awards has recognized individuals and teams driving progress toward the SDGs. With the advancement of generative AI, the organization developed this protocol to make heroic action more practical, accessible, and predictable. Education Director Amy Chang explained that the process yields multiple outputs including a GPT listed on OpenAI's GPT store, a continuously refreshed Innovation Engine built with Google's NotebookLM, and starting in 2026, a collaboration tool based in Microsoft Loop.
"There hasn't been an obvious route for everyday 'heroes' to earn recognition for sustained work on planetary challenges," said Sustainability Director Savithri Patel. The organization created a process that blends human judgment with AI, moving ideas across multiple models to make them more grounded and practical while reducing vulnerability 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 actionable, real-world solutions. Each model builds on the previous model's work, adding detail, clarity, and verification. The current highest-performing sequence includes Meta.ai, Claude.ai, Copilot.microsoft.com, Gemini.google.com, Perplexity.ai, Deepseek.com, and ChatGPT version 5.2. A single SDG target is presented to the first model, with outputs sequentially passed 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 platforms, and awardees gain the distinctive privilege of conferring the honor on others who complete the protocol. The organization reports that the process develops participants' skills alongside improving deliverables, as iterating across seven AI models with different strengths and blind spots accelerates analytical and creative abilities.
In a 2022 preliminary project, 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. The organization identified Substack creators as the most significant source of new participants in 2025. Chang described the initiative as democratizing planetary stewardship and human flourishing through enjoyable work using familiar AI tools that helps people develop a global mindset making change feel both achievable and personally meaningful.
