The Collectives Awards 2025
On Thursday 7th of May 2025, the Cyprus Environment Foundation (CEF) hosted the Conservation Collective’s (CC) fourth annual Collectives Award ceremony, at Casale Panayiotis Hotel, in Kalopanayiotis village.
The Collectives Awards celebrate the remarkable achievements of the Conservation Collective’s 22 grassroots foundations around the world. The best grant awards are judged by CC’s Global Advisory Panel—a distinguished group of sector experts who offer ad hoc support to the network. Applications were assessed based on their potential for replicability, scalability, the urgency of the issues being addressed, and the tangible impact created by the grant. The ceremony provided a significant opportunity to champion the exceptional calibre of this year’s award-winning grants across 6 categories including: restoring natural habitats, protecting native species, building climate resilience, reducing pollution, best impact and best fundraising.
The event kicked off with an introduction by the hotel’s General Manager, Patrick Dessy. Patrick expressed his gratitude for such an important event for global conservation and sustainable action to be hosted in Casale Panayiotis – the first hotel in Cyprus awarded with the rigorous Global Sustainable Tourism Certificate. CEF’s Executive Director, Sofia Matsi shared the highlights of the Foundation’s activities inviting attendees to get involved with the NGO’s work in Cyprus. With the opportunity of Sir David Attenborough’s 99th birthday Jade Brudenell, the Executive Director of CC, thanked all the members of the network for the exceptional work they do, walking in his footsteps to protect and restore the wild places we all know and love.
The award ceremony was coordinated by Stelana Kliris, director and producer of ‘Find me Falling’ – the first Cypriot film to stream globally on Netflix. Stelana expressed her gratitude for the people and organizations like the Conservation Collective for caring and taking real tangible action. ‘While my job may be to showcase natural beauty’ Stelana mentioned, ‘if it wasn’t for you, I would have nothing to show.’ The event was attended by the Commissioner of the Environment, Mrs Antonia Theodosiou, 43 CC network and core team members as well as partners and supporters of the Cyprus Environment Foundation.
CEF proudly accepted the award in the category Reducing Pollution for the project Empowering the Plastic-Free Beach implemented by the Cyprus Sustainable Tourism Initiative (CSTI). Furthermore, our project BonBonTrack: Identifying key habitats of bonelli’s eagle to keep them on track, implemented by KUŞKOR, The Society for Protection of Birds and Nature was Highly Commended in the category Best Impact. We warmly congratulate all winners and especially our local grantees for their impressive and hard work and we express our gratitude to our supporters that make it all possible.
At the space of the event, the ‘Loutra’ ceramic series was exhibited – A collection inspired by the colours and shapes of the landscape surrounding the Loutra of Aphrodite beach area in Akamas peninsula. Loutra is a fundraising partnernship between the Cypriot ceramic artist, Jelly Potter and CEF where in average 25% of proceeds will go towards the support of the organization’s work.
Find out more about the 2025 Collective’s winners on the CC’s website.
