2023 winner
Jihyeon “Cherry” Sung
South Korea
Cherry is a youth environmental activist from South Korea. She is the 2020 Global Social Leaders Global Goals Competition winner, the 2021 Youth Leads Award recipient, and a 2021 International Young Eco-Hero. In 2018, she founded "Greener is Cleaner," a youth-led organization for youth empowerment that has impacted 15K+ youths through educational events, activism, and content creation. As the chairperson of the National Environmental Education Center youth council, Cherry contributed to making environmental education mandatory in South Korean schools. For her Rise project, she wrote and designed an interactive English booklet containing six chapters about the environment for elementary school students in South Korean international schools. As someone with various interests, Cherry hopes to study the integration of sustainability into fashion with the hopes of possibly launching a business.