Herefordshire's Ellie Goulding receives award from UN

Herefordshire singer Ellie Goulding has been awarded the United Nations Foundation's New Voices Award in recognition of her environmental and social justice activism.

Accepting the award in New York from Munira Khalif, US Youth Observer to the UN, Ellie Goulding thanked the UN Foundation and revealed that in the New Year she will join the UN Family as a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Environment.

In an address to an audience that included United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Ellie spoke of growing up in the Herefordshire countryside where she was able to nurture a love of and respect for the natural world.

Ellie said, “I am an earth optimist. Through the Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Goals the UN has provided an extraordinary opportunity for us to come together to create a positive future. At the same time young people today are famously some of the most inclusive and solutions-orientated thinkers to ever walk on this planet. I want to use my platform to amplify their stories, bring them into the debate and to help fulfil their brilliant promise as global citizens.”