Adam Sterling nominated for 'Do Something' award

Adam Sterling, director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, a project of the Genocide Intervention Network, has been nominated for the "Do Something" Teen Choice Award. The winner of the award, determined by online votes, will be announced live on Aug. 4 at the Teen Choice Awards, airing at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Fox, and will receive a $90,000 grant from DoSomething.org to continue his or her work.

Sterling, a resident of Oak Park, helped establish GI-NET's role as the coordinating entity for the Sudan divestment movement with active campaigns in more than a dozen countries. Since the government of Sudan relies on foreign investment to fund its military, the targeted divestment model puts pressure on foreign companies to stop funding the genocide.

In the last three years, 25 states, 50 universities and 10 cities have adopted the policies established by Sterling and GINET, and nine major companies have ceased operations or significantly changed their behavior in Sudan.

Sterling is a featured subject in the 2007 documentary "Darfur Now," produced by Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle. He has also been a guest on a number of broadcast news programs, including CNN's "The Situation Room" and CNBC's "Street Signs." Sterling has received a number of humanitarian awards and provided testimony for numerous state legislatures, the United States Congress and the United Nations Global Compact.

Since 2003, as many as 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur region of Sudan. The violence has spread into Chad and the Central African Republic resulting in hundreds of thousands of refugees