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AVN Wins Dubai International Award for Best Practices!

Tony Kaye's picture

Association La Voute Nubienne (AVN) LogoAssociation La Voûte Nubienne (AVN) was awarded a DM grant in 2009 to test an innovative strategy for scaling up and accelerating the recruitment and training of Nubian Vault (NV) apprentices and the growth of a self-sustaining market in NV houses in Burkina Faso. The Nubian Vault is an ancient Egyptian technique of building vaulted roofs made from local bricks without using any wood, instead of typical tin roofs that are more expensive and use scarce wood during construction. AVN is transforming traditional housing available in the harsh climate of the Sahel region by providing a sustainable housing alternative and helping to avoid further deforestation.

AVN has won one of the Dubai International Award for Best Practice (DIABP) to Improve the Living Environment. The Award, co-sponsored by UN-Habitat, specifically recognised the program in Burkina Faso for 'best practice transfer'.

The DIABP was established under the directives of late Sheikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, during the United Nations International Conference in Dubai in November, 1995 with 914 participants from 95 countries, to recognize the best practices with positive impact on improving the living environment.

'All People Want to Do Is Live Their Lives'

Elizabeth Howton's picture

"All people want to do is live their lives." Dr. Suneeta Singh made that simple yet powerful statement during a panel discussion on “Empowering Gender Minorities in South Asia” on March 14, 2012 at the World Bank. Singh, a former Bank staffer and CEO of consulting firm Amaltas, spoke via videoconference from Delhi, India, while Nepal’s first openly gay elected official, Sunil Babu Pant, dialed in from Kathmandu.World Bank panel discussion on gender indentity in South Asia

Pant told the story of how he built a grassroots movement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people in Nepal, beginning in 2001. A turning point was in 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that gay and transgendered people “are natural” and mandated certain benefits and an end to discriminatory laws. Today, the country is drafting a new constitution, and Pant said that if passed, it will be one of the most progressive in the world with regard to the rights of sexual and gender minorities.

Sports Program Helps Children Overcome Despair of Poverty

Matthew Spacie's picture

Parvati Pujari, 21, is training to be a football coach. When she is not playing football, Parvati works at Magic Bus as a mentor. She is also completing a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the Mumbai University.

What makes all this special is that Parvati is from one of Mumbai’s 4 million extremely poor families who live on less than INR 592 – (USD 11.9) per person, per month. Her parents were constructions workers in Mumbai, helping build a five star Mall in central Mumbai. After construction finished, they moved into one 8 x 12 foot temporary room which floods every monsoon. “Our living condition is such that we get to see all seasons at close quarters,” says Parvati. Parvati’s family consists of nine people, making it difficult to make sure everyone gets enough to eat. “We mostly make do with a khichdi [rice and lentils],” she says.

What changed for Parvati was her belief in her own power to change her own – and her family’s – future by making sure she used every opportunity that was available in the system, but not used. Parvati completed school even as her girl friends were married off as children. While her peers were struggling with premature pregnancies and its attendant morbidity, Parvati was taking activity-and sport-based coaching classes for younger children, taking a job, working on her football course, and traveling abroad to raise funds for Magic Bus.

In the twelve years she has spent with Magic Bus, Parvati has demonstrated what is possible, even for the very poor to do to break out of poverty.

Solar Sister: Bringing a market based, gender inclusive, bottom up clean energy revolution to Africa

Neha Misra's picture

Solar Sister LogoAlmost 1.6 billion people on the planet don’t have access to electricity. And 70% of these are women and girls for whom the darkness is quite literal. Today, even though portable solar LED lighting technology is an affordable solution; lack of innovation in distribution channels has kept the products from being available in the rural markets where traditional supply chains simply do not exist.

The challenge is to marry technology innovation with a delivery system that is efficient, sustainable and scalable. Solar Sister is an innovative social enterprise addressing this weakest link through a market-based, gender inclusive, bottom-up solution to bring a new kind of clean energy revolution in Africa.

With an Avon-style women-driven business model, Solar Sister addresses both geographical access - making clean energy products available at the rural customer's doorstep; and cultural access - closing the gender-technology gap by including women as key players in the provision of technology solutions instead of as passive consumers of energy.

Development Marketplace in India supports the vision and ‘can-do’ spirit of social entrepreneurs

Kirsten Spainhower's picture

Satyan Mishra, founder of DrishteeDrishtee is a network of over 14,000 rural enterprises that provides villages in India with access to internet connections, consumer products and critical community services.

Brainchild of Indian national Satyan Mishra, the Drishtee model is perfecting a “last mile delivery system” to reach villages that governments are unable to.

Mishra’s success was due in part to the faith that Global Development Marketplace (DM) — a Bank sponsored partnership that provides grant funding to support testing and scaling up of innovative ideas — had in his idea. In 2003 he received a $68,100 from DM allowing him to transform a budding idea into reality and scale up into three states: Assam, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.

“I am going to be the leader of my country.”

Anita Ayers Henderlight's picture

A U.S. congresswoman from Arizona was shot. The Hollywood Foreign Press was handing out Golden Globes to the entertainment industry. The White House was preparing for a visit from China’s president. The people of Southern Sudan were announcing preliminary results of a vote for independence from their Northern counterpart.

 All of these headline events are worthy of attention. One event that did not make a headline is the one that will forever be embedded in my memory. It’s a development worker’s dream come true. After years of advocating for the rights of young women and girls, of fundraising to make education accessible to females in a traditionally patriarchal society, and of dreaming about a world where girls feel free from oppression to express their opinions and beliefs with confidence, I received an important phone call.

Innovative tools to match seeds to the needs of women farmers in Ethiopia

Ehsan Dulloo's picture

Climate change poses a serious threat to future food security. Increases in temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are expected to increase food shortages, especially in Africa. In response, governments and scientists are looking for ways to reduce the negative impacts of climate change on food production.

Ethiopia, which has a strong history of conserving its food crops, has partnered with the CGIAR-supported Bioversity International to implement a World Bank Development Marketplace 2009 winning project called Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers. The project works to ensure farmers, particularly women farmers, will have an assured supply of climate-tolerant seeds for food production as climatic conditions change in the future.

Manav Seva Sansthan wins STAR Impact Award

Kirsten Spainhower's picture

Manav Seva Sansthan (MSS), 2008 Development  Marketplace winner, recently won the STAR Impact Award. The award recognizes and supports local organisations that  achieve excellence in the provision of services to disadvantaged children and that demonstrate effective management practices. Winners receive $100,000 in unrestricted funding, tailored consultancy support and media training.

Under the Development Marketplace project, MSS works to provide excluded women and their families with legal rights to land through a collective/group land  ownership rights model. The concept of collective land ownership for ensuring women control of land and building women’s leadership in agriculture based livelihood is unique in the Indian context. MSS is successfully carrying out “collective land and collective farming” with small farmers using Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) techniques.

The iPod for Development

Kirsten Spainhower's picture

Photo Courtesy of Lifeline EnergyThe Lifeplayer is being billed as the new iPod for development. Kristine Pearson Lifeline Energy CEO, believes that this device will enable rural populations to leap across the digital divide and access vital information in ways they could hardly have imagined.

 

The Lifeplayer is an oversized MP3 device that can be pre-loaded to hold 64GB of educational content. It can also download audio content from the internet or record live voice or radio programs for playback later. With a wireless solar panel and a hand-wound crank, the Lifeplayer can even be used to charge mobile phones.

Finding Beauty in Nepal's Third Gender

Kirsten Spainhower's picture

The winner (National HIV/AIDS Ambassador) Sandhya Lama with film maker Catherine Donaldson. Photo credit Vincent Claeson.

 

What creativity that emerged from a competition on reducing the HIV related stigma and discrimination! In 2008, the South Asia Region of the World Bank put out a call for proposals for innovative ideas that tackle stigma and discrimination associated with HIV. Proposals had to target vulnerable populations such as transgender, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, sex workers, and people living with HIV and AIDS. From the resulting 1,000 submissions, 75 finalists were identified and 26 winning projects were awarded funds for an 18 month implementation period. Projects used numerous creative ways to decrease discrimination through the use of theater, songs, new businesses and even a beauty pageant! Whoa, a beauty pageant, in development? This made me stop in my tracks. I had to find out more.

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