 The SEED Initiative assists young and promising initiatives, to strengthen and scale-up the impact of their activities. Photo credit, SEED Initiative |
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The 2009 SEED Award Winners will be announced on Tuesday, May 12 during the Seventeenth United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 17) meeting. A record 1140 submissions were received.
The award ceremony will be held at Millennium Plaza Hotel in New York and will be attended by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director; Gerda Verburg 17th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 17) Chair and Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, the Netherlands; Olav Kjorven, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of Bureau for Development Policy; IUCN's director-general Julia Morton- Lefèvre; and Matthias Machnig, German's Secretary of State Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, among others.
The SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development is an annual international competition, designed to support locally-led, innovative, entrepreneurial partnerships in developing countries which have the potential to make real improvements in poverty eradication and environmental sustainability.
The Initiative assists young and promising initiatives, to strengthen and scale-up the impact of their activities. It develops learning resources for the broad community of social and environmental entrepreneurs, informs policy- and decision-makers, and aims to inspire innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to sustainable development.
Unlike most other competitions, the SEED Award does not carry a money prize. Instead a range of services, support and connections are offered through SEED's Support Programme, to give Award Winners every prospect of success.
The 2009 finalists include projects such as innovative inland oyster aquafarming from Cook Islands; facilitating market access for artisan miners from Colombia; Sunny Money - solar micro-franchising by international NGOs and community-based organisations in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia; “MakaaZingira” project producing FSC certified charcoal for conservation and livelihood creation from Kenya; One Million Cistern Program (P1MC) from Brazil; and solar conversion of traditional kerosene hurricane lamps from Bangladesh.
Other projects include reversing severe land degradation through innovative organic farming of essential oils, made from the indigenous Tarchonanthus camphoratus bush, “Bridge to the World” from Zimbabwe; developing bio-cultural protocols with different local indigenous communities from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana; Carbon Bank and Village Development from Thailand; a sustainable self-financing solid waste management project from Niger; a PV-based telephone charger solar project from Burkina Faso; solar energy, education & fishing from Sri Lanka; the sustainable use of Amazonian seeds from Brazil; integrated plastics recovery and recycling flagship project from Kenya; and the clean energy initiative from Mozambique, among others.
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