The Hero Awards has introduced a new pathway aimed at everyday changemakers who have three hours to spare to create maximum impact: a guided, seven-step workflow that combines the complementary strengths of top AI systems to help translate each of the UN's 169 SDG targets into credible, practical action plans, according to CIO John Toomey. Since 2019, The Hero Awards has recognized people and teams who drive meaningful progress toward the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With the advent of modern Generative AI, they decided to create a methodology to allow heroism to be practical, accessible, and predictable; hence the current system.
"We designed a protocol the average participant can complete in about two or three hours," said Education Director Amy Chang. "The outputs include a GPT listed on OpenAI's GPT store, plus 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. Together, these create 169 robust solution-evolvers that, alongside human judgment, keep generating new approaches to the Goals and Targets over time." "There hasn't been an obvious route for everyday 'heroes' to earn recognition for sustained work on planetary challenges," said Savithri Patel, Sustainability Director at The Hero Awards. "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. In our view, it helps participants 'Be the Singularity'—to epitomize the moment when AI begins to outperform human intelligence."
The workflow starts by "priming" each AI with heavily tested prompts so it stays tightly focused on producing actionable, real-world solutions. Each model then builds on the previous model's work, adding detail, clarity, and checks along the way. The current highest-performing sequence is: 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 Model 1; its output is then passed to Model 2, and so on—until all seven systems have strengthened and stress-tested the proposal.
Completed solutions are archived on The Hero Awards' Academia.edu page so others can study, reuse, and improve them. Winners are highlighted across the organization's social channels, blogs, websites, and press announcements. Awardees also gain a distinctive privilege: the ability to confer the honor on others who complete the protocol. The organization says the process improves more than the final deliverable—it also strengthens the participant. "Each AI has its own 'personality,' with different strengths and blind spots," said Patel. "By iterating across all seven models, participants don't just get better results from the tools—they accelerate their own analytical and creative abilities."
In a preliminary project which was a forerunner to this one, conducted in 2022, it was discovered that for every 100 completed procedures, 29 participants wrote a piece of content which received traction in a traditional media source, 14 were quoted in an academic or professional journal, 7 started an NGO or non-profit entity associated with the chosen Target, and 5 founded a startup. The biggest source for new insightful project participants in 2025—Substack creators. "We see this as a way to democratize planetary stewardship and human flourishing," Chang added. "It's work—but it's enjoyable work using familiar AI tools—and it helps people develop a global mindset that makes change feel both achievable and personally meaningful."
