Selected from over 4,200 applicants from 145 countries, youth-led nonprofit TECHO wins top award for work to fight extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean
Through the awards, PIR has contributed over $1 million to growing the .ORG Community of changemakers making the world a better place
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Public Interest Registry (PIR), the people behind the .ORG domain, announced the winners of the 2026 .ORG Impact Awards, an annual celebration recognizing and rewarding outstanding mission-driven individuals and organizations from around the world for their positive contributions to society. The seven winners — selected from over 4,200 applicants from 145 countries — were announced live at the awards ceremony, which took place on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
PIR awarded a total of $180,000 in donations to organizations from the global .ORG Community across seven categories:
- Community Building
- Quality Education for All
- Environmental Stewardship
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Health and Healing
- Hunger and Poverty
- Rising Star (leaders under 30 making a difference in their communities)
In addition to the category winners, PIR named TECHO the winner of the .ORG of the Year award, recognizing the youth-led nonprofit’s work to fight extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. TECHO is the first Latin America-based organization to win the prestigious award.
As the 2026 .ORG of the Year, TECHO will receive a $50,000 donation from Public Interest Registry.
The judging panel was inspired by how TECHO brings people together to create lasting change in their own communities — at a scale that demonstrates the extraordinary power of collective action. TECHO was a 2025 finalist and applied again in 2026.
“The winners of the .ORG Impact Awards are the best of the .ORG Community, and PIR is honored to spotlight the work they are doing to create positive change across the world,” said Jon Nevett, President and CEO of Public Interest Registry. “The work that this year’s .ORG of the Year winner, TECHO, does to mobilize local communities to solve the housing crisis across Latin America is critical and should energize us all to do more to help each other. We’re honored to support their work and excited that the awards have become a community that organizations keep coming back to.”
This year marks a major milestone for the .ORG Impact Awards: since the program began eight years ago, Public Interest Registry has now awarded more than $1 million to support the extraordinary work of .ORGs around the world through the awards.
Emmy-winning television host, author and activist Karamo hosted this year’s .ORG Impact Awards ceremony. Karamo is best known as the culture expert from Netflix’s Queer Eye and is the founder of The Talented Twelve, a private philanthropic fund that funds individual scholarships, grants, and community-level initiatives for African American high school graduates and college freshmen in need of emergency funds.
“For nearly three decades, TECHO has been built on a simple belief: lasting change happens when communities come together and people have the opportunity to shape their own futures,” said Juan José Ayerza, Global CEO of TECHO. “Being named .ORG of the Year is an incredible honor, but this recognition belongs to the families, communities and volunteers across Latin America who have built this movement together. We are ready to keep moving forward and thank PIR for believing in us.”
2026 .ORG Impact Award Winners
.ORG of the Year – TECHO
Donation Amount: $50,000 USD
TECHO is a youth-led organization working in Latin America’s informal settlements, mobilizing volunteers and communities to overcome poverty through housing, civic engagement, and community-building programs. TECHO works alongside families and volunteers to improve housing and living conditions, providing access to basic services and community infrastructure where it’s needed most. TECHO’s model puts communities at the center of their work, bringing people together to develop locally rooted solutions that promote dignity and social justice.
Community Building – TECHO
In addition to being named the .ORG of the Year, TECHO is also the winner in the Community Building category.
Quality Education for All – Style Her Empowered (SHE)
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Style Her Empowered (SHE) is a nonprofit that partners with communities in Togo to expand educational opportunities for girls and create dignified employment for women. The organization helps girls stay in school by solving one of the largest barriers to education for girls around the world: school uniforms. Its innovative “uniform that grows” is designed to expand six sizes and up to 12 inches in length, reducing the cost of replacing uniforms as girls grow and helping them to stay in school.
Environmental Stewardship – Friends of Tonga
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Friends of Tonga is a volunteer-led nonprofit that partners with local organizations across the Kingdom of Tonga to advance education, environmental stewardship, human development, and disaster resilience while fostering cultural exchange and lasting community connections. Their work has included distributing more than 60 rainwater cisterns, supporting water, sanitation and hygiene services for 5,000+ people, and building Tonga’s first cyclone- and earthquake-resistant kindergarten. The organization has also supported crop restoration, water security and other projects designed to help communities withstand the growing impacts of natural disasters.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Boys Champions Foundation
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Boys Champions engages boys and men across Nigeria through community and school-based programming, sports, and fellowships to promote caring masculinity, mental health, and gender equality. Since 2018, the organization has mentored and empowered more than 26,000 participants, while continuing to support hundreds of alumni as they move into higher education. Its programs aim to equip boys with the skills and support to build healthier relationships, families and communities by helping shift the norms and behaviors that drive exclusion, inequality, and harm.
Health and Healing – Hope to Walk
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Hope to Walk provides low-cost prosthetic legs and prosthetic training programs to help amputees in underserved communities abroad regain mobility, independence and the ability to walk. While commercial legs can cost up to $25,000, Hope To Walk’s prosthetic leg costs just $250 to make. In its first decade, Hope to Walk fitted more than 2,500 patients across countries including Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Tanzania and Vietnam, while training people in-country to expand access to care.
Hunger and Poverty – Food4Education Foundation
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Food4Education works to ensure no child has to learn hungry by partnering with governments and communities across Africa to build locally rooted, financially sustainable school feeding systems that nourish children and strengthen local economies. What began by feeding 25 children has grown into a large-scale school feeding model using centralized kitchens, locally sourced food and technology to efficiently reach students across Kenya. The organization has served more than 100 million meals and is now feeding hundreds of thousands of children each school day while creating thousands of jobs and supporting local economies.
Rising Star – Dr. Adriana Viola Miranda, 1000 Days Fund
Donation Amount: $10,000 USD
Dr. Adriana Viola Miranda’s work with 1000 Days Fund is helping communities across Indonesia give every child a healthy start during the critical first 1,000 days of life. Through its community-based approach, 1000 Days Fund trains and equips community health workers to provide growth monitoring, nutrition counseling, and household outreach aimed at preventing childhood stunting and strengthening maternal and child health. An independent evaluation found that stunting prevalence in two districts where the model was implemented fell 19% over three years, while maternal adherence to iron and folic acid supplements rose to 72%.
About Public Interest Registry
Public Interest Registry (PIR) is a nonprofit that operates the .ORG top-level domain—one of the world’s largest generic top-level domains with more than 12 million domain names registered worldwide. .ORG is open to everyone, providing a global platform for organizations, associations, clubs, businesses and individuals to bring their ideas to life. PIR has been a champion for a free and open Internet for two decades with a clear mission to be an exemplary domain name registry, provide a trusted digital identity and help educate those who dedicate themselves to improving our world. PIR was founded by the Internet Society (internetsociety.org) in 2002 and is based in Reston, Virginia, USA. Visit www.pir.org for more information.
Media contact: pir@berlinrosen.com
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