Ceremonial presentation of the Constructive World Award in Berlin

The Constructive World Awards were presented in Berlin in front of around 200 guests from the media, politics, business and science.

The award, initiated by the BurdaForward brand FOCUS online, honors so-called tandems: both media professionals for their outstanding critical and constructive journalistic achievements and the protagonists behind the ideas portrayed. For the second time, the award was presented for six outstanding media contributions. With this award, the Burda subsidiary wants to honor journalism that deals with future-oriented initiatives and solutions.

Our democracy is undergoing a real endurance test in this super election year. Once again, we need vital and free journalistic media in these times to keep our society informed and paint the whole picture. It is part of our responsibility to dedicate ourselves to effective solutions and to put those who are fighting for them in the spotlight, as we are doing today.“

Not negativism and the problems of this world, but ideas and role models on a grand scale to attract media attention and thus a stage - with this common goal, a high-caliber 22-member jury came together a few weeks ago. It is made up of editors-in-chief and media professionals from leading publications in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as experts from business and society. Jury members include Philipp Welte (Hubert Burda Media), Christian Dezer (ZDF), Sven Gösmann (dpa), Steffi Buchli (Ringier Media Switzerland), Ana-Cristina Grohnert (Charta der Vielfalt), Gabriele Hässig (P&G), Caroline Kent (Women for Women International Germany), Felicitas von Peter (Active Philantrophy) and Jano Costard (Sprind). Since its foundation last year, the Constructive World Award has become a major platform for good ideas. The Constructive network includes media professionals, high-ranking representatives from foundations, companies and publishing houses as well as people from politics, science, business and, of course, individuals, whose commitment receives valuable support and visibility here.

“We have set ourselves the task of bringing critical and constructive journalism out of the niche and onto the big stage. We reached more than three million people on FOCUS online with the articles on this year's awards alone,” says Florian Festl, Editor-in-Chief of FOCUS online.

200 submissions in six categories

The six categories of the Constructive World Awards are based on the UN's seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. They are intended to cover the most pressing issues currently facing our society. In total, the jury assessed almost 200 entries, including contributions from ARD, WDR 5, Zeit, RTL, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin and Frankfurter Rundschau. This means that twice as many texts, audio contributions, cross-media and moving image formats were submitted than for the first Constructive World Award 2023. 

The Constructive World Award winners 

convinced with their contributions and received the award:

• Category “Better Planet”: Joshua Kocher (media professional) and Christoph Trütken (protagonist) for Die Erde mit Erde retten (first publication in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin 2022)
• Category “Fundamental Survival”: Bettina Rühl (media professional) and Nancy Kemboi (protagonist) for Die Erntemacher. Wie die Ernährung in Afrika gesichert werden kann. (First publication in 2023 on WDR 5)
• “Peaceful Guidance” category: Bastian Kaiser (media professional) and Hernán Cañola (protagonist) for Der Traum von der großen Bühne: Kolumbiens ärmste Region auf dem Weg in den Profifußball (first publication in 2022 on ARD Sportschau)
• “Innovative Infrastructure” category: Johanna Romberg (media professional) and Irene Kalinin for Befreit die Bäche, damit das Wasser im Land bleibt (first published in 2023 on riffreporter.de)
• “Universal Empowerment” category: Jan Rübel (media professional) and Duygu Özen, Jürgen Heider, Anne Gersdorff and Peter Kaiser (protagonists) for In nächster Nähe,so fern (first published in 2020 in the Frankfurter Rundschau)
• “Economic Life” category: Matthias Weidner (media creator) and Karsten Lutze (protagonist) for Exakt Landleben (first publication in 2023 on MDR)

The winning entries and all nominated entries can be found on FOCUS online: https://www.focus.de/perspektiven/constructive-world-award/

Award ceremony with prominent support

The winning tandems received their awards at a summer event at the Prince Charles in Berlin. The evening was hosted by Nina Moghaddam, who welcomed the guests together with Daniel Steil (BurdaForward CEO) and Lydia Rullkötter (BurdaForward CEO). Among the guests were Burda board member Marc Al-Hames, photographer and actor Manuel Cortez, musician and music producer Leslie Mandoki as well as entrepreneur and CDU politician Werner Michael Bahlsen and model Zoe Helali. As last year, Munich artist Janine Mackenroth is responsible for the design of the award.

Panel talk on the topic of credibility

A panel discussion also took place in an exclusive setting before the award ceremony.
Moderated by Florian Festl (FOCUS online), Carolin Stüdemann (Viva Con Agua), Daniel Steil (BurdaForward), Franca Lehfeldt (presenter and journalist) and Sebastian Tripp (Managing Director of PANDA Fördergesellschaft für Umwelt mbH WWF) put the credibility of reporting to the test. They discussed the question of how authentic and important the purpose-driven approach is for business and the media.