NOW Youth Leadership & Child Health Advocate Awards

2025 Child Health Advocate Awardee Announcement Coming Soon!

2025 Nsedu Obot Witherspoon (NOW) Youth Leadership Awardee

Madhvi Chittoor is a 14-year-old Eco Warrior and an SDG STEAM advocate. She is the youngest UN Child Advisor, 2024 TIME Kid of the Year Honoree, People Magazine Earth Day Featured Person, voted the Best Upcoming Peacemaker by 14 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Global Ambassador for EarthDay.org and Plastic Pollution Coalition. She has been a Climate Warrior since she was 5 years old and is also known as “No Styrofoam Ninja”, “No Plastic Ninja”, “Ms. Policy” and “Ban PFAs Beast”. She has ushered largescale impactful changes locally, nationally, and globally through advocacy, policy and education via signature campaigns, public speeches, testimonies, meetings with and emails to many heads-of-states, legislators, diplomats, Climate scientists, businesses, artists, educationists, etc. In September 2023 she addressed the UN Assembly in Geneva and in March 2023, she addressed the UN General Assembly in NY. As per UN she made history as the youngest UN Child Advisor in the formulation of UNGC 26. She founded the non-profit Madhvi4EcoEthics at age 6, the EcoEthics Global Movement at the age of 9 and EcoSTEAMNinjas at age 13 with operations in India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Spain, Portugal, Brazil,etc.

A few of her policy successes are – Spearheaded 1) Global Plastic Policy with Madam VP Harris and US Secretary of State Mr. Anthony Blinken which lead to the US joining the Global Plastics Treaty, later ratified by the UNEA in March 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal 2) with EPA Water former Head Ms. Radhika Fox and US EPA Chief Mr. Michael Reagan to issue legally enforceable reduced PFAS guidance limits in Drinking water all over USA and also globally 3) with Governors to declare March as PFAS Pollution Impact Awareness Month and April as Plastic and Styrofoam Pollution Impact Awareness Month in Colorado 4) with legislators and Governors to bring about 3 laws in 2021, 2022. 2024 – to ban plastic bags and Styrofoam containers and to ban PFAS in consumer products in Colorado 5) In 2024 with ECMC on cumulative impacts and produced water governance for oil and gas industry 6) In 2021 and 2022 with EPA on Air Quality nationally and AQCC in Colorado 7) in 2020, with COGCC/ECMC the implement her suggestions as rules in the oil-and-gas permit process for surface water, stormwater and ground water conservation for the entire oil-and-gas industry in Colorado 8) the replacement of non-biodegradable carcinogenic Styrofoam lunch trays from 155 schools with 86000 students with compostable ones and eliminating 26 million Styrofoam containers from going to landfill from 2019 till date and saving the health of students and many more 9) Has designed and organized customized Climate Action and Climate Adaptation workshops, events, presentations empowering children and youth globally.

She is also an internationally recognized music composer, plays many instruments, two Guinness World Records holder, a recognized author, a Bharatanatyam dance exponent, a Taekwondo Black Belt and an inventor. . Her book “Is Plastic My Food?’ received recognition from National Geographic and the US Congress.

About the Annual Awards

This celebration honors advocates for their leadership on behalf of children’s environmental health, equity, and climate action and justice. CEHN honors these incredible leaders each year at an awards ceremony in Washington DC on Children’s Environmental Health Day.

The Child Health Advocate Awards honor outstanding children’s environmental health leaders (age 22 and up) in Policy, Science, Community, Business, and Arts/Media. These child health champions have gone above and beyond to create systemic change, protecting children from environmental hazards.

The NOW  Youth Leadership Award was created as part of the Children’s Environmental Health Network’s 20th-anniversary celebration in 2012, in honor of Executive Director Nsedu Obot Witherspoon. This award honors a young person who has demonstrated exceptional environmental health leadership–protecting human health, especially of our most vulnerable populations.