Nominate

Each project year (2016, 2017 and 2019), 120 Under 40 accepts nominations of young people who have made significant contributions to family planning worldwide. Past winners are not eligible to be nominated again.

Vote

Each project year, 40 winners are chosen by the public via online voting and a jury of experts and leaders in family planning. Nominees who receive at least 75 public votes pass to the jury scoring round, in which they are scored by a panel of experts in family planning according to the published evaluation criteria. Finally, the project secretariat reviews the results and determines the winners, all of whom receive $1,000 from the Gates Institute.

Celebrate

The 40 winners for each project year are announced in September. A smaller representative group of the 40 winners are invited to the United States for a series of celebrations, events and activities around World Contraception Day (September 26).

The process took place for the first time in 2016, and for the second time in 2017. It will repeat once more in 2019, so that 120 young family planning champions will be assembled by 2020, a highly significant year for the family planning community.