A new kind of awards show has entered a season brimming with Emmys, Oscars, and Grammys.
Redcarpet ADvocacy, known as RAD, is an organization that “awards cultural icons who inspire purpose,” say the founders, Arianne Phillips and Carineh Martin. Today, RAD has announced its list of recipients of the first-ever RAD Impact Awards, which includes Charlize Theron, Travis Scott, Margot Robbie, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Laverne Cox. Additionally, Michelle Obama received the RAD ICON Award for her “extraordinary commitment to inspiring purpose, positivity and progress” according to a press release, and Amanda Gorman received the RADVOCATE Award for inspiring today’s youth.
Here’s how it works: each winner chooses a charity that will share their award—and receive an impact donation to fund a project whose goal is to benefit other people.
RAD also partnered with Luxury Stores at Amazon for a special RAD Impact Edit digital storefront featuring such brands as Aquazzura and Rodarte where 100% of sales proceeds made between the dates of April 22 and April 30 will benefit RAD charities. (On the Amazon mobile app enter “Luxury Stores” in the search bar to shop the edit.)
“This is the most meaningful award I've ever been given,” Robbie said. She has selected the Australian non-profit Youngcare and the honoree Emily Dash, a young woman with Cerebral Palsy, with whom to share her award. “I love RAD so much because it is taking the opportunities that we have—that sometimes just fly by and become meaningless—and actually making them really meaningful.”
As for the rest of the recipients, Theron chose the charity CTAOP and honoree Aya Jezile, a 26-year old Black woman from the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, who used her experience working for a CTAOP program to advocate for the empowerment of youth in her community and educating young girls especially to stay in school. Scott will give several Waymon Webster scholarships to HBCU students, including his honoree Raquel Simpson, who is currently a second-year student at Howard University. Chopra Jonas will share her award with Devishi Jha, a youth climate justice activist who works with ZeroHour and UNICEF’s national council, and Cox is furthering her work supporting those who identify as LGBTQIA-2S through her support of APAIT; her honoree is a Black trans woman named Kadence King.
Possibly the most fun part of giving a RAD Impact Award is surprising the lucky recipients—which Robbie, Theron, Chopra Jonas, Cox, and Scott all did via Zoom.
“After a year plus of unimaginable devastation, we were inspired to launch the RAD Impact Awards to honor and amplify positivity and purpose,” added the founders, Phillips and Martin. “We could not be more excited about our inaugural awardees, who are inspirations to us and so many people around the world for their authentic support of the causes they believe in. Empowering their advocacy and helping them create impact for their charities, while also inviting the public to get involved, is what RAD is all about.”
