NEW YORK (October 12, 2020) — Flash Drives For Freedom has been voted “Best in Show” among websites for activism in the 15th annual w3 Awards. Receiving over 3,000 entries from across the globe, the w3 Awards illuminate creative excellence on the Web, recognizing the best digital content creators across the industry.
“To be selected as a winner is a tremendous honor, and it recognizes the real achievement here, which is the ongoing dissemination of outside information to millions of people living under the world’s most repressive government,” said HRF board member and North Korean defector Yeonmi Park. “Information will transform North Korea and empower its people to seek freedom.”
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) launched the award-winning Flash Drives for Freedom program in 2016 with a simple yet powerful call to action: donate a USB drive you have lying around your house to help liberate the minds of North Korean people and provide them with valuable information. Placing outside information into the hands of citizens enables the North Korean people to experience a different reality: one where systematic violence, physical suffering, and intellectual oppression are not the norm.
HRF works in collaboration with defector-run field partners, including the North Korea Strategy Center (NKSC), No Chain, and Now Action Unity and Human Rights (NAUH), to help curate the drives’ content and to understand the needs of North Koreans, drawing upon their first-hand knowledge of North Korean society dynamics, and ensuring that the methods used are still relevant, cost-effective, and best suited to bring open information into the country.
The w3 Awards is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. A full list of the 2020 award w3 Award winners can be found here.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.
For interview requests and media inquiries, contact media@hrf.org.