Wednesday 21 May 2008

Planting Ideas

Wangari Maathai will be presenting this year's International Ashden Awards. Robert Butler describes her extraordinary life in this article, published in Resurgence Magazine

IN 1981, WANGARI Maathai, a forty-one-year-old divorcee living in Nairobi, had so little money that she drove her three children over to her ex-husband’s house and deposited them with him. With no job, no pension and no home, her prospects, as she puts it in her new autobiography Unbowed, amounted to “zero”. All she had left was an idea.

Twenty-three years later, when she had turned the Green Belt Movement into a worldwide cause, had faced down the corrupt and authoritarian government of Daniel Arap Moi, and had brought women into the heart of the Kenyan political process, Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The idea that transformed her life and the lives of so many others was based on a simple premise: “Anyone can dig a hole, put a tree in it, water it, and nurture it.” This one gesture could combat soil erosion and desertification, retain rainwater, provide firewood and restore biodiversity. Maathai’s dream was to plant 15 million indigenous trees: one for every Kenyan. She more than exceeded her own target. So far, 30 million trees have been planted in Kenya alone.

Read the full story here.

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Saturday 17 May 2008

New SKG Sangha website

SKG Sangha has launched a new website, which can be viewed here:

www.skgsangha.org

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Friday 16 May 2008

Zara Solar Emerges Winner of Lighting Africa Competition

Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grant program administered by the World Bank and supported by various partners that identifies and funds innovative, early stage projects with high potential for achieving positive development impacts.

Lighting Africa Development Marketplace (LADM) Competition is an integral part of World Bank Group’s broader Lighting Africa Program which seeks to reach 250 million people with modern, affordable lighting by 2030. The LADM theme, Innovation in Off-grid Lighting products and Services for Africa, focuses on households, businesses, and community service providers without access to electricity. Winners will receive up to US$ 200,000 to implement innovative, local projects that fit this theme.

The LADM call for proposals in September/October 2007 generated over 400 applications from 54 different countries. These applications went through evaluation by assessors from both inside and outside the World Bank Group to identify the top 52 finalists, who will compete for funding at the Marketplace on May 6-7, 2008 in Accra, Ghana. These finalists represent 38 different Sub-Saharan countries and address the following sub-themes:

  • Service Delivery: Sustainable and large scale delivery of lighting products in Sub-Saharan Africa including through removal of policy and other barriers.
  • Product Innovation: Responding to consumer and market needs by development and commercialization of high quality, durable, efficient, low cost lighting products and services.
  • Environment: Using renewable energy, clean energy technologies, energy efficiency, and/or environmentally sustainable solutions to meet the lighting needs of households, small enterprises, communities etc.
  • Health: Protecting health from environmental risks factors, such as indoor air pollution and improper disposal of hazardous material
Zara Solar based in Mwanza – Tanzania emerged as one of the 16 winners of Lighting Africa Competition. At this Marketplace Competition Zara Solar also got highest votes for People’s Choice Award among 52 finalists by the conference participants who numbered more than 400 from different parts of the world. Special award was given for this achievement.

Zara Solar was also winner of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, [1st Prize Winner The Ashden Africa Award 2007] for Providing Reliable and Affordable Solar Systems in Northern Tanzania. For more details please visit: www.lightingafrica.org

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Tuesday 13 May 2008

SKG Sangha wins Mother Theresa Excellence Award

SKG Sangha has been awarded the 'Mother Teresa Excellence Award'. The award was presented by Mr. M V Rajasekharan, a former minister in Government of India at a function in Bangalore on 24 May 2008.

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Monday 12 May 2008

More news from SKG Sangha

SKS Sangha writes:

SKG Sangha has been approached by M/s KRISH COW FARMS & DAIRY PRODUCTS LTD, Mauritius recently to explore whether we can work for their projects in Mauritius. The team of 4 directors from Krish Farm has visited the office of Sangha at Kolar. They visited some of the installations by SKG Sangha. Now the team from Mauritius has offered us to take up work in Mauritius. We are preparing to send a team from SKG Sangha to Mauritius to take up work of installations and impart the technical knowhow to M/S. KRISH COW FARMS & DAIRY PRODUCTS LTD, Mauritius.

I trust that this is news for Ashden awards family as an Ashden Winner is taking up work in a foreign country.
Read more about SKG Sangha on the Ashden Awards website.

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Friday 2 May 2008

New award for Aid Foundation

Bacolod NGO wins World Bank contest
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. of Bacolod City won the World Bank’s Panibagong Paraan 2008 Project Grant Competition, AIDFI executive director Aladino Moraca said yesterday.

The AIDFI project proposal was “Installation of Hydraulic Ram Pumps for Water Supply Trade-off to the Protection and Conservation of 1,000 Hectares Watershed Forest Reserve.”
Read the full story here

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