The Hero Awards organization has introduced a systematic approach that enables everyday individuals to contribute meaningfully to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals through a guided seven-step workflow combining multiple artificial intelligence systems. This protocol allows participants to translate each of the UN's 169 SDG targets into credible, practical action plans within approximately three hours, according to Chief Information Officer John Toomey.
Since 2019, The Hero Awards has recognized individuals and teams driving progress toward the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. With the advancement of generative AI technology, the organization developed this methodology to make heroism practical, accessible, and predictable. Education Director Amy Chang explained that the protocol produces 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 group 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. "So we created a process that blends human judgment with AI—moving ideas across multiple models to make them more grounded, more practical, and less vulnerable to hallucinations." Patel described this approach as helping participants "Be the Singularity," representing the moment when AI begins to outperform human intelligence.
The workflow begins by priming each AI system with heavily tested prompts to maintain focus on producing actionable, real-world solutions. Each model builds upon the previous model's work, adding detail, clarity, and verification 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 version 5.2. In practice, a single SDG target is presented to the first model, with its output passed sequentially through all seven systems to strengthen and stress-test the proposal.
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 communication channels, and awardees gain the distinctive privilege of conferring the honor on others who complete the protocol. The organization emphasizes that the process improves both the final deliverable and the participant's skills, as iterating across seven AI models with different strengths and blind spots accelerates analytical and creative abilities.
Preliminary data from a 2022 forerunner project revealed significant outcomes: 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-profit entities associated with their chosen target, and 5 founded startups. The organization has identified Substack creators as the biggest source for new insightful project participants in 2025.
Chang described this initiative as democratizing planetary stewardship and human flourishing, noting that while the work requires effort, it utilizes familiar AI tools and helps people develop a global mindset that makes change feel both achievable and personally meaningful. The protocol represents a significant development in making global sustainability efforts more accessible to individuals outside traditional institutional frameworks, potentially accelerating progress toward the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through distributed, technology-enabled participation.
