Anglican Youthworks website, Fervr, was recently announced as a Webby Award winner.
Fervr.net was honoured in the 16th annual Webby Awards as the winner of the Religion and Spirituality section, beating out websites from CNN and PBS.
The Webby Awards honours the best of the web and is described as ‘the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet’.
“I'm overwhelmed with gratitude to Youthworks' management, our designers, developers, and our brilliant contributors,” said Mrs Kitty Fung, digital producer at fervr.net. “They were the ones who believed in this website from the beginning. They got squarely behind Fervr and have quietly been doing their best work to reach teens for God’s glory. I'm glad they are being acknowledged for their efforts and this award is theirs alone.”
Fervr.net is a website designed for Christians and young people who are interested in finding out more about a Christian world view.
“We have made some significant changes over the last year,” Mrs Fung said. “When Fervr started back in 2009 it was designed to be an online community. But over time we decided that it would be better to minister to young people where they are, on Facebook. Now the site is focussed on content, which we encourage our users to share on social networking sites.”
Fervr publishes daily articles, reviews and videos with the aim of ‘unpacking what the Bible says to young people today’.
The more than 10,000 entrants for the Webby Awards are judged on criteria such as: content, visual design, functionality, creativity, concept and writing, integration and overall experience.
“I think what sets us apart from other religious sites is that we embody what the Webbys are about,” Mrs Fung said. “Religious news sites subscribe to the old school of media but we offer a much richer user experience.”
The Webbys is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an executive 1,000-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and associate members who are former Webby Award winners and nominees and other Internet professionals.
Winners were announced at 9pm AEST on May 1, with the awards ceremony being held in New York on May 21. Tradition dictates that winners are allowed to give a five-word speech either at the ceremony or via video.
“At the moment we are trying to think of a way to present the gospel in five words,” Mrs Fung said.
Anglican Youthworks CEO Zac Veron is very excited about the importance of this award.
“I am very proud of our Fervr team,” he said. “Their hard work has now received well deserved international recognition, but more importantly, thousands of young people around the world are visiting the site on a regular basis and are being positively influenced to think Christianly about life."
Fervr.net was also acknowledged in the 2011 Webby Awards as an official honouree.
Other winners of the 2012 awards include websites from: NASA, The New Yorker, Facebook and Dropbox.
