Europe and Central Asia

Ennovent announces the winners of the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge

Ennovent and WWF Switzerland announced the winners of their Tropical Forest Challenge this past Monday. The winners came from two categories: company and startup. Launched in May 2012, the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge is a global initiative managed by Ennovent on behalf of WWF Switzerland to discover the best for-profit enterprises from around the world that have a positive impact on the conservation of tropical forest biodiversity.

The winners are endorsed by WWF Switzerland as best solution providers and are awarded global visibility, networking and capacity building opportunities from the challenge partners such as, Good Company, Sustainatopia and Thomson Reuters Foundations’. These Challenge rewards are important as many early-stage entrepreneurs face resource gaps – such as networks and training – that inhibit their ability to scale high potential ventures.

As Albania prepares to celebrate 100 years of independence in 2012 with an eye towards becoming a member of the European Union; it must make crucial improvements in a sensitive area: good governance.

For better governance, citizens need more access to information; budgets and local taxes need to be transparent. Women and youth need equal opportunities in business, and agriculture policies need to be developed openly.

To address these, the government is drafting and implementing new policies for central and local government, with support from the World Bank Project for Good Governance in Albania. The World Bank is further supporting the government's agenda through support for civil society projects using the Development Marketplace competition platform to solicit and select high impact projects for implementation. The British Council is overseeing their implementation.

On Thursday, July 22, the World Bank Institute is launching a special e-issue of Development Outreach magazine whose theme is "The Power of Innovation," and we're inviting you to help us tell how innovation can be a game changer in solving the biggest global development problems.

Get involved by signing in to a special webinar on Thursday that will be led by WBI Innovation Practice Team Leader Aleem Walji, one of the lead authors of the Development Outreach special issue.

The webinar begins at 3 p.m., but sign in early -- by 2:30 or 2:45 p.m. -- because the number of participant slots is limited to 100.

In a post-crisis world, innovation may be the single most important driver of economic growth and competitiveness. The time is right to move development forward through creative uses of technology. We now have the capacity to scale up innovative approaches to meet the needs of people at the bottom of the pyramid when traditional markets fail to do the job.

How to do all this is detailed in "The Power of Innovation." Top experts tell how to mobilize innovative solutions to reduce poverty--smarter, better, faster, and differently.

DM2008 award winner Volunteer Service Organization (VSO) has co-established a wool and cashmere fiber laboratory in rural Mongolia that will help Montolian herders and traders gain entry to the more profitable premium fiber market.

The English-language UB (Ulaanbaatar) Post published this story on the lab.

With their fiber graded for quality, 300 Mongolia farmers could see their income increasing up to 25 percent. Up to now, the farmers, without grading, had to sell their wool and cashmere fiber as lower-priced raw material. Mongolian traders will also benefit from the grading as they participate in the international fiber market.

Sustainable development has been one of Development Marketplace's themes since its beginning 10 years ago. It's hard to count all the DM winners and finalists who have come forward with innovative "green" ideas that they wanted to share. Just a few examples:

One of the winners in DM2007 -- themed "Health, Nutrition, Population" -- was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-sponsored project to develop clean-burning cooking charcoal from agricultural waste. Haiti's traditional cooking fuel often comes from wood. But wood burning produces high pollution that is a cause of widespread respiratory disease. Substituting charcoal for cooking not only improves the health of Haitian families, but also means fewer trees -- a major protection against soil erosion -- are cut down.

Innovative climate change projects that succeed in raising at least $4,000 will be eligible for bonuses that could win the top performer up to $13,000 extra in the Green Open Challenge sponsored by "online marketplace" GlobalGiving.

In particular, the Challenge is a perfect fit for DM2009 finalists -- whose projects are built around climate adaptation -- and DM2008 finalists -- whose agriculture projects almost always include climate adaptation. Other nonprofit climate projects that emphasize innovation and are locally based -- like the DM ones -- are also prime candidates. Fund-seeking projects can find out how to join the Challenge here. The deadline for applying is April 25.

Participating projects that meet the $4,000 threshold in donations from at least 50 donors during the Challenge period from July 5 to July 30 will be showcased by GlobalGiving on its website and have ongoing access to the organization's considerable, and proven, fund-raising know-how. Since 2002, 96,147 donors have given $27,596,968 to 2,538 projects promoted by GlobalGiving. The nonprofit organization's specialty is matching givers to specific development causes around the globe. On top of that, GlobalGiving keeps donors up to date on what their targeted money achieves in results.

Green Open Challenge is just one of a series of challenges that GlobalGiving sponsors annually to build and energize relationships between givers -- anyone anywhere who contributes at least $10 -- and nonprofit causes and developing countries. Targeted donations can be made quickly on GlobalGiving's website.

The 40 Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East in Russia have had to struggle mightily -- not only against a hostile environment but also what they see as sometimes arbitrary governmental action. But they're making fresh progress, according to this emailed report from DM2009 winner Rodion Sulyandziga (holding award in photo at right), Director of the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CSIPN), which has spearheaded recognition and -- more important practically -- enforcement of Indigenous Peoples' rights:

"On April 14-15 in Moscow the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) -- the umbrella organization that includes CSIPN -- will be hosting (in partnership with the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation) the Arctic Indigenous Leaders Summit, with the main focus on climate change in the Arctic. The participants are international experts, academia, Arctic states, regional governments, business, and Indigenous Peoples. The Summit will create a good basis for our future activities and networking. It's vital for us to involve federal, regional governments, and business from the scratch.

"We are also invited to the high-level international meeting "The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue" on April 22-23 under Russian Premier Putin to make a presentation on behalf of Indigenous Peoples. This is a good progress."

Patrick Svenburg, co-founder of Random Hacks of Kindness, tells "Developers for Development" audience: "There's no shortage of big ideas in the world. It's the action part that's often lacking."

“Big Data” –- the billions upon trillions of bytes of digital information that are pumped into cyberspace every nanosecond –- has a single, secular mission: to keep growing. Now, software developers – the not-so-nerdy techies who keep Big Data growing at its feverish rate –- are striving to channel Big Data into the public good.

On Monday at the World Bank, developers came together with the development community -- in person and virtually through Skype video -- to figure out how to do that.

The entire "Developers for Development" can be seen on B-Span, the World Bank's webcasting service.

The afternoon event, which attracted an auditorium-ful of in-person visitors (many of them curious staffers from risk management and ICT at the World Bank) and many more via the live webcast that was offered in English, French, and Spanish, started with developers showing what's already been achieved since the first CrisisCamp about data and the public good was convened in Washington with CrisisCommons-World Bank co-sponsorship in June 2009.

The first demo was about the on-the-fly proliferation of CrisisCamps internationally in response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti in February.

When Ned Breslin, CEO for the international social company Water for People, talks, the effect can be like a splash of cold water on your face. Development-speak is not his style.

Take this snippet from his new "Rethinking Hydro-Philanthropy" essay:

"Success will require less single-minded focus on the absolute number of people without access to water and sanitation facilities and more focus on the serious questions around long-term impact and sustainability. So that years after the cameras have left, the donor reports have been filed, and the press release circulated, the community is not forgotten."

"Sweat equity" from needy communities is not enough, Breslin argues. "Up-front community contributions," he says, are essential to making new water -- and sanitation -- facilities sustainable.

Water for People won a US$200,000 Development Markektplace 2007 award for water facilities in Malawi, which Breslin, in this radio interview, says "has some of the worst water and sanitation problems in Africa."

Breslin's credo -- that water and sanitation in poor countries should not be viewed as a charity mission -- is being validated elsewhere.

There is a laser-like focus on the capacity of developing countries to respond effectively to the steep challenges of their Millennium Development Goals and

Ethiopian farmer, with his children, shows newly irrigated crop to extension agent.

destructive climate change. Capacity gaps are relentlessly pinpointed. Sometimes national governments themselves provide the toughest evaluations, like this one from Bangladesh's Ministry of Environment and Forest on the country's climate adaptation action program:

"...institutional capacity including human resource quality [is] weak and poor and needs substantial improvement if the challenges of climate change are to be faced squarely....A lack of awareness, both of the potential gravity and the extent of the problem as well as possible actions that could be taken, is the foremost [barrier]. This lack of awareness exists at all levels from national level policy makers to sectoral and local level officials as well as amongst civil society and the most vulnerable communities themselves...."

There are, to be sure, capacity gaps in Bangladesh and other developing countries, and identifying what and where they are is the first step in closing them. But there are also "bright spots" and, perhaps more important, underlying strengths, especially at the local level across all developing countries that can be masked by the emphasis on gaps.

Europe and Central Asia

Ennovent announces the winners of the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge

Innovation Promotes Good Governance in Albania

Join webinar on WBI's 'The Power of Innovation'

DM2008 Winner Helps Open Fiber Lab to Benefit Mongolian Herders

Development Marketplace Honors Earth Day

Climate Projects Can Win Big Bonuses in 'Green' Fund-Raising Challenge

DM2009 Siberia Winner Reports on Indigenous Peoples' Progress

How 'Big Data' Can Benefit the Public Good

Water and Poor People: No More Charity

'Hot Spots,' 'Bright Spots,' and Hidden Strengths in Capacity

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