We start by opening up public nominations on national level. This means that anyone can nominate anybody - just as long as they fall within the guidelines of each nomination category.

We'll go through the list and get each nominee to confirm their participation in the awards and to be selected for shortlisting.

Together with our extensive national and regional advisors, we work to determine the top 5 nominations in each category in each participating country.

Once selected, the top 5 shortlisted nominations in each category will go into the national finals to determine the winner in each country.

Once the nominations are in, we turn to the national communities and ask them what they think. Public voting is equivalent to one jury vote. This is not a popularity contest, but it's important that we get an indicator from how the community themselves perceive the nominations.

The jury members will rank each nomination according to the information presented to them. This information is obtained directly from the nominee.

National jury members selected by the Country Partners and regional HQs will determine who wins in a specific national award.

The winners from the national events will be automatically shortlisted for the same category in the regional finale and compete against other nations in the same region. In both the national and regional process, the winners are selected by both public voting and jury delegation.

Depending on the region, winner announcements may vary from online postings through to gala events in concert halls. Please check your local region for more specific information.

At the end of every second year we host the bi-annual gathering where we place the winners from our top categories to be placed against each other to determine out of all the thousands of nominations and tens of thousands of votes, who should deserve to be the very best from throughout all of our regions.

As we select our nominations from the regional winners, we already have a 'shortlist'. From this shortlist, we gather the very best jury members from around the world and throughout our entire network to decide our winners.