Creating tangible change

With the many problems our world is up against, driving change takes ingenuity, perseverance and the galvanizing of wide support. In 2024, the TED community advocated for powerful ideas that are already transforming lives, communities and society at large.

A war journalist's story sparks support for next generation

Indigenous communities are risking their lives to protect the environment. At TED2024, TED Fellow Anjan Sundaram gave a powerful talk on his reporting on this phenomenon, sparking a conversation on the importance of journalism for surfacing untold stories in conflict zones. An attendee was so inspired, they funded Sundaram to start the Stringer Foundation, a “Nobel Prize for journalism,” providing support for wartime journalists around the world.

GirlTrek has inspired 1.4 million Black women to walk daily. Over 67% of their participants have reported improvement in pre-existing conditions.

Celebrating  5 years of Audacious ideas

The Audacious Project raises funding to make big, world-shaking ideas a reality. This year, the initiative celebrated its first graduating class, with six projects finishing the five-year program and taking stock of their impact.

Some of the incredible change this first cohort has created:

Sightsavers helped eliminate trachoma in Benin. In the coming months, Botswana, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau will join its ranks, eradicating trachoma by WHO standards. Today, 15 million fewer people are at risk for this disease.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) developed new methods for studying the ocean’s twilight zone, learning that it sequesters 2 to 6 billion metric tons of carbon annually — more than double the amount emitted by cars worldwide.

The Bail Project prevented more than 1,184,000 days of incarceration for people awaiting trials, saving US taxpayers over $92 million in the process.

In March, another member of The Audacious Project’s first class got liftoff when MethaneSAT — a satellite designed to measure methane emissions — launched into orbit. It’s now circling the globe every 95 minutes, monitoring 80% of the world’s oil and gas production, to help us avoid the worst climate impacts.

TED levels up the power of convenings

TED has always used events to catalyze collective action; now, we're launching new conference experiences designed for the future. This year, TED received the highly acclaimed 2024 IMEX-EIC Innovation in Sustainability award for utilizing community-led storytelling and sustainable planning at the 2023 Countdown Summit in Detroit. In October, the first-ever TEDNext conference in Atlanta, Georgia inspired nearly 1,000 attendees to explore their path and purpose with brand-new formats for talks and workshops centered on personal growth and cultivating leadership for a thriving future.

By the numbers

In 2024, TED content was shared more than 21.9 million times, creating a multiplier effect of change around the world.

In Addition:

$5.9B

$5.9 billion has been unlocked since the start of The Audacious Project for projects taking on society’s most intractable problems.

1 million educators are now using TED-Ed in the classroom, inspiring the next generation, with lessons getting more than 2 million views a day.

Thank you for being with us on this journey.

As a nonprofit, we rely on the support of our partners, donors, volunteers and fans to create this kind of impact.

Together, we're sharing knowledge, democratizing problem-solving and helping the most groundbreaking ideas reach their full potential.

Stay tuned. We can’t wait to show you what’s coming in 2025.