AIDFI now in top three for BBC World Challenge

(pic: children using water from AIDFI pumps in the Phillipines)

News today in the Visayan Daily Star announces that AIDFI (who won an Ashden Award in 2007) is in the top three projects shortlisted for BBC World Challenge. The overall winner will be announced on 29 November at a high-profile ceremony in Amsterdam. It looks as if AIDFI's hard work to secure votes is paying off.

See also:
Ram pumps provide fresh water
AID Foundation selected as finalist for BBC World Challenge

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Blog Action Day announces 'water' as this year's topic

Early this morning, Blog Action Day announced that the topic for October 15 is 'water'. (Last year it was climate change; the year before it was poverty.) The Ashden Awards blog is one of nearly 800 blogs that have signed up to write about water that Friday.

Blog Action Day brings together bloggers from around the world to post about the same issue on the same day "with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action".

Last year 13,606 bloggers from 156 countries joined in the conversation about climate change.

We'll be blogging news on October 15 about Ashden Awards winners, such as: IDEI, CRELUZ, Practical Action and AIDFI (currently nominated for World Challenge award).

As Mary Robinson said in New York last week: "Water is the oil of the 21st century and waste is the gold." Maybe waste will be next year's topic.

From 2009: We've signed up, have you? and Svati Bhogle, from TIDE, a 2008 Ashden Award winner, writes on last year's Blog Action Day about "the efficient use of energy, use as different from abuse in the developed world and misuse in the developing world."

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More YouTube videos about IDEI and SELCO

Many of our Ashden Award winners also get involved with other organisations to help publicise and expand their work. Here's a couple of videos from Youtube.

IDEI, who won an Ashden Award in 2006, and an Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award in 2009, have also been working with the Skoll Foundation. Here's a video about their work:


SELCO, who won an Ashden Award in 2005, and an Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award in 2007, have been working with media organisations, such as Deutsche Welle, Germany's English-language international broadcaster, who made this film:


In case you'd never seen their original Ashden Awards films, here are the two for IDEI:



and the two for SELCO:

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AID Foundation to open 'Techno Park'

AID Foundation won an Ashden Award in 2007 for their work with ram pumps, supplying water to remote villages. They are now opening their 'Techno Park':

A Techno Park of the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. will mark its opening day with the theme: “A Showcase of Alternative Technologies in Harmony with Nature and People,” at the AIDFI compound in Mansilingan, Bacolod City, Nov 8

To be showcased are the hydraulic ram pump, hydro power systems, models of water pumps, piggery with built-in bio-gas supply for cooking, stainless built-essential oil distiller, organic tilapia fish pond, contoured mini-rice-paddies, vermi-composted organic fertilizer, some rare plants and a nursery of fruits and some endemic species of trees.

Read the full story here

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