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Dear Member of the Katerva Community,
Today is an important day at Katerva, as we are announcing the winners of the Katerva Awards. We thought you would like to hear it first-hand. All of us here at Katerva extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the winners!
Bioneedle Technologies Group is the winner of the 2012 Katerva Award. Although this project is only in the ideation stage, this technology has the possibility to grant vaccine access to more people than ever before and increase the global population’s immunity to infectious disease. Bioneedles, “tiny, biodegradable mini-implants,” come pre-filled and contain vaccines in a thermally stable environment. The Bioneedle Technologies Group(see www.launch.org/innovators/gijsbert-van-de-wijdeven) is a project based in The Netherlands.
The Katerva Award is the pinnacle of global sustainability recognition and has been referred to as the Nobel Prize of Sustainability. The Katerva Award winner was chosen from 51 Finalists, the top ranked projects in each of ten award categories. According to Terry Waghorn, founder and CEO of Katerva, “Today’s unprecedented challenges require a new kind of organization, one that optimizes the world’s unprecedented interconnectedness, prioritizes action and systematically taps the most innovative ideas on the planet. Katerva is that organization: designed to convene, catalyze and accelerate breakthrough solutions to global challenges.”
This year, for the first time, Katerva Finalists were also part of a public vote for the People’s Choice Award, held on Katerva’s website. Over 3,650 people cast their vote.
The 2012 Katerva People’s Choice Award winner is:
Safe World for Women (www.asafeworldforwomen.org)
The Safeworld International Foundation is a women-led NGO working with grassroots groups to promote women’s empowerment and sustainable development, tackle the root causes of poverty and oppression, and bring positive social and economic change at a global level. It is registered in England and Wales.
Honorable Mention goes to ¡Echale! a Tu Casa (www.echale.com.mx), an assisted self-build program that provides sustainable community development through social housing production. ¡Echale! a Tu Casa (put your heart into your home) is commissioned by the Mexican National Social Housing Production Program.
The ten 2012 Katerva Award Category Winners are:
Behavioral Change: FOLDIT (www.fold.it/portal/)
Foldit focuses on solving challenging biochemistry problems by building a symbiosis between computers and people through interaction with a video game. Foldit was developed by the University of Washington.
Economy: Water.org‘s WaterCredit (www.water.org/solutions/watercredit/)
Water.org‘s WaterCredit puts microfinance tools to work in the water and sanitation (watsan) sector. WaterCredit is the first comprehensive program of its kind that connects the microfinance and watsan communities to scale up access to credit for individual- and household-based watsan needs. Water.org is a worldwide project based in the US with staff in the US, India and Kenya.
Ecosystem Conservation: Reef Check (www.reefcheck.org)
Reef Check is the world’s largest reef monitoring network. The Reef Check Foundation is a non-profit that started in Southern California in 1996 with a mission to empower local communities through grassroots research, conservation and education to protect and rehabilitate reefs worldwide.
Energy & Power: Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (www.crhet.com)
Discarded in heaps along roadsides and riverbanks, rice husks are considered waste in many countries heavily dependent on rice as a staple product. However, the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (CRHET) is challenging this notion by creating a rise husk gasifier stove that uses rice husks to provide clean and low-cost fuel. Gas produced from just one kilogram of husk can generate an equivalent of 1,920 kilocalories of energy. TheCRHET is an office at the CPU College of Agriculture, Resources and Environmental Sciences in the Philippines.
Food Security: Backpack Farm Agricultural Program (www.backpackfarm.com)
The Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) in Kenya is an internationally recognized social enterprise aggregating packages of “green” farming inputs and conservation training exclusively to smallholder “commercial” farmers with 2-5 acres of land earning their primary income from horticulture production.
Gender Equality: Safe World for Women (People’s Choice Winner, see description above)
Human Development: Bioneedle (Katerva Award Winner, see description above)
Materials & Resources: Pasteurization Technology Group (www.pastechgroup.com)
The Pasteurization Technology Group seeks to revolutionize the disinfection of wastewater using a patented “two-for-one” technology, eliminating toxic chemicals and intensive electricity usage in the process. Based in California, it has partnerships in North America, Asia, and South America.
Transportation: Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System for Shipping (http://www.mhi.co.jp/technology/review/pdf/e481/e481053.pdf)
The Mitsubishi Air-Lubrication System (MALS), developed by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Corporation in Japan, is a technology designed to reduce the skin-friction resistance on the hull of a ship by sending air to the bottom of the hull to create a layer of air bubbles between the hull and seawater.
Urban Design: Agua Clara (www.aguaclara.cee.cornell.edu)
The AguaClara Program is a research program at Cornell University that produces engineering design for reliable and sustainable municipal-scale water treatment plants.
The purpose of the Katerva Award is to reward those projects whose quality and innovation provide concrete solutions to global challenges. The Katerva Award Winner will be fostered through development stages by members of the Winner’s Circle, a group of businesses and committed experts, with the aim of implementing the winning project for maximum impact.
For more information on all of these projects, see our website at www.katerva.org.
Sincere regards,
The Katerva Team
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