“Ethical Markets congratulates this innovative company SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises), its founders and all who work with them!
And kudos to KATERVA and its Founder, Terry Waghorn, for finding so many wonderful Awardees over the years . Hazel Henderson, Editor”
Katervans, we have our 2017 Grand Prize Winner!
The 2017 Katerva Awards competition has come to conclusion: Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE28), of the Gender Equality category, is the 2017 Grand Prize winner, congratulations!
Watch this ~3 minute video for a primer on the why, what and how of SHE28:
SHE28 is a beautiful example of how all three aspects of the triple bottom line can be addressed successfully: using locally sourced, eco-friendly renewable materials (planet), they tackle the social stigma of menstruation and lack of sanitary pads that prevent young women in developing countries from attending school (people) by offering microfinance loans to female-run businesses (profit). Each such business creates roughly 100 jobs and gives 100,000 girls and women access to affordable sanitary pads.Here’s the reaction from SHE28’s Director of Strategy, Connie Lewin, upon receiving the news:
“We hope that our holistic model of local sourcing and local production with our SHE28 initiative will serve as a catalyst for new and sustainable approaches to tackling taboo and overlooked health problems across the world. The Katerva prize is global recognition that our innovative use of banana fiber into an essential health product is more than a novelty; it’s a transformative solution that delivers real impact on communities globally.“
The competition’s runner-up was MIT’s Thin Film Solar Cells (Materials, Resources & Water category), while CarbonCure (Environment category) came in third. These rankings were determined by our Awards Council and involved a 2-part process: rating aspects including the innovations’ potential, effectiveness, uniqueness and impact, followed by the allocation of an imaginary investment fund among the 10 finalists.
As the Grand prize Winner, SHE28 has ‘first right of refusal’ to the pro-bono offerings of Katerva’s Winners Circle, an amazing group of companies which includes TrustLaw, incitrio, and Kelley School of Business. However, as it is our aim to help accelerate as many radical sustainable innovations as we can, we are currently surveying all of our Finalists to find out what would really make a difference for the next part of their journey, and will then trawl our network to invite the most appropriate organizations to join the circle. Watch this space!
That there are benefits to being part of the Katerva universe even if you are not a Category or Grand Prize Winner shows the initiative of Gary Whitehill, long-standing member of the Katerva community. Gary, as much interested in accelerating the future as we are, offered all 2017 Finalists to meet up with him for a one-on-one mentoring session while he is on his extensive tour of Europe.
Check-in with his thinking via this ~15 minute TEDx Talk.
A traveler in the Katerva universe, Gary Whitehill is a celebrated mentor, speaker and entrepreneur.With the 2017 round of the Katerva Awards complete, we’re already preparing for the next round! This includes reviewing our Awards Council. As believing in the crowd is even reflected in our name (as you know, ‘Katerva’ is the greek word for ‘crowd’), we thought we put the following question to all of you:
“If there were one person whom we should invite to join our Awards Council, someone with an outstanding record in the world of sustainability, someone who has left a visible mark in the space, who would it be?”
Please let us know! You can complete this form, or directly email Katerva’s Director of Awards Program, Bettina von Stamm ([email protected]katerva.net).
Last but not least, we are delighted to announce that we have a physical space where you can visit us! Katerva’s international headquarters is now hosted by our partners in San Diego, Procopio.
Drop by for a cappuccino chat, or write us love mails. We’ll read them all.Again, most sincere congratulations to SHE28, all of us are looking forward to supporting you on the next steps of your journey.