The Nobel Prize for sustainability? That's what Katerva sells itself as: it's a new and important awards organization which scours the globe for people and organizations that can make real, immediate change for our planet. Now Katerva has announced its 10 winners for the Katerva Awards 2012. In 2011 I wrote about Katerva's 8 finalist projects that will save planet earth (including this eco-toilet) and today I am helping Katerva announce its 10 winners for 2012.
Terry Waghorn, who established the organization, spends his days and nights networking and Skyping with high-ranking authorities across the globe, from celebs, princesses, supermodels, entrepreneurs and universities to techies at their hubs. Oh, and once and a while, me. Unlike TED events (see the TEDx I helped organized in Jaffa) which bring together important and inspiring people to talk, Katerva is a catalyst that aims to put talk into serious action.
According to Waghorn, "Today's unprecedented challenges require a new kind of organization, one that optimizes the world's unprecedented interconnectedness, prioritizes action and systematically taps the most innovative ideas on the planet. Katerva is that organization: designed to convene, catalyze and accelerate breakthrough solutions to global challenges."
Winners (posted below, including the grand prize winner for a micro-implantable vaccine delivery device) will be fostered through development stages by members of Katerva -- people, businesses and committed experts. Read on for the list of who wins support from Katerva. These are organizations that should be on every humanitarian funders' e-roladex, and obviously they are great starts for interns and volunteers. Simply by sharing this post you can help support them.
And the winners are:
Bioneedle Technologies Group is the top winner of the 2012 Katerva Award. Bioneedles, "tiny, biodegradable mini-implants," come pre-filled and contain vaccines in a thermally stable environment. The Bioneedle Technologies Group is a project based in The Netherlands. Although this project is only in the ideation stage, this technology has the possibility to grant vaccine access to more people than ever before and increase the global population's immunity to infectious disease.
Safe World for Women: The Safeworld International Foundation is a women-led NGO working with grassroots groups to promote women's empowerment and sustainable development, tackle the root causes of poverty and oppression and bring positive social and economic change at a global level. It is registered in England and Wales.
¡Echale! a Tu Casa is an assisted self-build program that provides sustainable community development through social housing production. ¡Echale! a Tu Casa (put your heart into your home) is commissioned by the Mexican National Social Housing Production Program.
FOLDIT focuses on solving challenging biochemistry problems by building a symbiosis between computers and people through interaction with a video game. Foldit was developed by the University of Washington.
Water.org's WaterCredit puts microfinance tools to work in the water and sanitation (watsan) sector. WaterCredit is the first comprehensive program of its kind that connects the microfinance and watsan communities to scale up access to credit for individual- and household-based watsan needs. Water.org is a worldwide project based in the U.S. with staff in the U.S., India and Kenya.
Reef Check is the world's largest reef monitoring network. The Reef Check Foundation is a nonprofit that started in Southern California in 1996 with a mission to empower local communities through grassroots research, conservation and education to protect and rehabilitate reefs worldwide.
Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology: Discarded in heaps along roadsides and riverbanks, rice husks are considered waste in many countries heavily dependent on rice as a staple product. However, the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (CRHET) is challenging this notion by creating a rice husk gasifier stove that uses rice husks to provide clean and low-cost fuel. Gas produced from just one kilogram of husk can generate an equivalent of 1,920 kilocalories of energy. The CRHET is an office at the CPU College of Agriculture, Resources and Environmental Sciences in the Philippines.
The Backpack Farm Agricultural Program in Kenya is an internationally recognized social enterprise aggregating packages of "green" farming inputs and conservation training exclusively to smallholder "commercial" farmers with 2 to 5 acres of land earning their primary income from horticulture production.
The Pasteurization Technology Group seeks to revolutionize the disinfection of wastewater using a patented "two-for-one" technology, eliminating toxic chemicals and intensive electricity usage in the process. Based in California, it has partnerships in North America, Asia and South America.
Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System for Shipping, developed by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Corporation in Japan, is a technology designed to reduce the skin-friction resistance on the hull of a ship by sending air to the bottom of the hull to create a layer of air bubbles between the hull and seawater. This makes shipping less polluting and more efficient.
The Agua Clara program is a research program at Cornell University that produces engineering design for reliable and sustainable municipal-scale water treatment plants. This means less contaminants entering our groundwater, seas and waterways and an easier way for cities and towns to deal with wastewater.