Pillar of Freedom Award

The Acton Institute established the Pillar of Freedom Award in 2026 to recognize institutions demonstrating an outstanding commitment to liberty in places where that commitment carries real cost. It is given not to an individual but to an institution, because a free and virtuous future is never carried by one person alone — it is carried by those willing to stand and bear its full weight, together, for as long as it takes. The recipient also receives a cash award from the Acton Institute.

Instituto Isabel was founded in 2023, in Brasília, by two women — Andrea Hoffmann Formiga and Andressa Bravin — who looked at their country and decided that someone had to stand for life, for family, for the freedom to believe. In under three years, and without a single dollar of government support, their small team stood before Brazil's highest court. They have walked into more than twenty congressional hearings where the room was not on their side, and stayed anyway. They helped stop a policy that would have let a child face an irreversible decision without her own parents ever knowing. They helped move a constitutional amendment protecting life through committee, one vote at a time, in a legislature they had to win over, not one that owed them anything.

They are named for Princess Isabel — "a Redentora" — a woman who once put her own crown at risk to sign her name to freedom for people she would never meet. It is a rare thing for an institution to grow into its own name so quickly. Instituto Isabel has.