News
Jompy Stove leads charge of EA brigade in World Challenge
The lightweight and inexpensive stove-top device sits between a cooking pot and an open flame to rapidly boil water. Photo/COURTESY
Posted Monday, August 9 2010 at 00:00
BBC World News will broadcast six 30-minute programmes profiling each of the World Challenge’s 10 finalists, showing how their projects and businesses are changing lives and local communities.
The finalists will also be profiled in Newsweek magazine.
The audience and readers are then invited to vote online www.theworldchallenge.co.uk — for their favourite project or business from September 27. Voting closes on November 12.
$20,000 grant
The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Amsterdam on November 30 and will receive a $20,000 grant from Shell to invest in their project, while the two runners-up will each receive $10,000.
From Malawi is the “In a Nutshell” programme by The Full Belly Project helping to improve life in developing countries, an Africa-wide project to promote easy-to-make and easy-to-maintain technologies to improve agricultural-output sustainability.
The “One Reef at a Time” project by Blue Ventures in Madagascar offers researchers and volunteers the chance to work with local communities to protect the reefs using sustainable marine conservation areas.
Blue Ventures project — home to both the world’s fourth largest coral reef and a rejuvenated octopus fishing industry — is working with local communities to make sustainable livelihoods a reality.
From Denmark is the “Africa: Cyber Capital” by MYC4 that invite people worldwide to connect directly with African entrepreneurs who cannot obtain capital to develop their businesses, allowing African enterprise to attract investment at an interest rate that they are willing to pay.
“A Class Apart” by the Tecnico Maya Vocational School in Guatemala is creating better employment and education opportunities in Comalapa.
A popular park has already been created, but the goal now is to create a mixed academic and vocational school, built from recycled waste such as car tyres and bottles.
The Indian project called “Burn After Eating” by Husk Power Systems uses an innovative technology mix to run off-grid mini power stations fired by rice husks — a by-product that would otherwise be thrown away.
In the state of Bihar in India, an estimated 50,000 villagers are lighting up with bio-power.
From Mexico came “Saving From a Rainy Day” by Isla Urbana which is developing a simple collection and filtering system which harvests rainwater, mainly using materials from local hardware stores and installed by specially trained local plumbers.
Others were the “Pass it On” organic project from Peru, “The Only Way is Up” water project and the “Growth Cycle” bicycle project from the Phillipines.
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