The jury members for the upcoming Issue Award 2023 have been announced!
The Issue Award is an annual prize for an organization or person that has successfully managed to get an issue on the social and political agenda.
Jurors
The jury consists of six members, each with a different background and expertise. In the coming weeks they will discuss who deserves the 2023 Issue Award. Four of the six jury members are jury members for the first time this year. This year's jury consists of:
- The jury chairman: Maria van der Heijden, director of MVO-Nederland
- Mieke Ansems, director of communications and marketing at VNO-NCW and MKB-Nederland
- Joris Backer, member of the D66 faction in the Senate
- Omar Kbiri, co-founder of production agency Maak Amsterdam and organizer of the VEED Awards
- Mark Monsma, director of the Collaborating Health Funds (SGF) and the Healthy Generation and previously also of the Dutch Smoke Free Alliance
- Jasper Mulder, journalist at Adformation, specialized in communication and PR
Expectations
The jury members are looking forward to getting started and looking for the winning initiative: “An issue is something that catches your breath and has cleverly found its way to the public. I am curious whether we will discuss issues that we should have solved 20 years earlier, such as the energy transition, or issues that are important today, such as Big Tech and AI,” says Omar Kbiri. They also hope that the prize will encourage exemplary behavior, Joris Backer: “It is easy to give up, there is a huge culture of paying back these days. It is much more difficult to commit to a solution. It is important to pay attention to people or organizations that do something good for society. It can hopefully lead to people being inspired to do the same.”
Knowing how to make a difference is what distinguishes a winner. “I have been following the award for years and I think it is important that the award shows that people can make a difference. No matter how fixed policies or relationships may seem and how rigid ideas may be,” Jasper Mulder.
The Issue Award
Issuemakers present the Issue Award every year to an initiative or organization that has committed itself to an issue in the past year and has put it on the agenda in a striking or effective way with the general public or in politics. Previous winners of this prize were Eva González Pérez for her commitment to the benefits affair in 2021, Organization Black Lives Matter NL for the Vapor Protest on June 1, 2020 and Tim Hofman for the #BOOS documentary 'Back to your own country' in 2018.
The jury members will soon consult with each other to discuss and select the most important issues of the past year. They will determine the final nominees and the winner of the Issue Award 2023 will be announced on Tuesday, January 24.
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