World Challenge 2009

One of Mann Deshi’s partners wants to nominate them for the BBC/Newsweek World Challenge Award 2009. While I was looking on the website to see what the competition was all about, I began to think that Mann Deshi may not be the strongest competitor since its mission and services aren’t focused on environmental sustainability. However, reading through some previous finalists was inspiring. There were three projects/organizations in particular that caught my attention. Of course the issues surrounding these organizations are more complex than the following blurbs (from BBC's website listed below), but sometimes it’s amazing how simple an idea is and how much change it can create.

Organization: Maka
Country: Uganda

The price of imported sanitary pads - around US$1.50 for a pack of ten - puts them beyond the reach of Uganda's poorest families. Accordingly, many disadvantaged girls skip school during their periods, creating a vicious cycle in which the poorest fall furthest behind in their education.

Noticing this trend in Kampala, Dr Musaazi Moses set himself the goal of producing sanitary pads that could be sold for no more than US$0.27 per pack. He was able to keep costs down by using locally sourced materials - papyrus and paper - and manufacturing the pads on a cottage industry basis.

The current rate of production stands at around 1,500 pads per day - and Dr Moses expects this to increase over time. Since its foundation in 2004, MakaPads have benefited hundreds of girls in Kampala and beyond.

Organization: Arghand
Country: Afghanistan

Despite the efforts of American and British forces to put the squeeze on Afghan opium production, the country remains by far the world's largest source of heroin. Arghand Inc is approaching the problem from a different angle. By creating a market for crops such as almonds, apricots, pistachios and liquorice root, the company reduces opium production without depriving farmers of an income.

The exotic crops are used in the manufacture of high-end soaps and skin-care products for the export market. These products might not have quite the same street-value as heroin, but because Arghand operates on a fair trade basis, its farmers end up with more cash than they'd get from growing opium.

Arghand was set up in 2005 by journalist Sarah Chayes, whose first-hand experience of Southern Afghanistan inspired her to strike at the chains of poverty and violence that bind the region to the opium poppy.

Organization: Irula Tribal Venom Center
Country: India (I think I like this one because it involves snakes!)

Most Indians hate snakes. On the one hand, snakes such as the cobra and the saw-scaled viper play a vital ecological role, helping to keep down the country’s vast rodent population which eat some 20 per cent of all India’s crops. Without snakes, that percentage would be much higher. Yet snakes kill up to 20,000 people every year – the highest snakebite fatality rate in the world. Small wonder many Indians favour the extermination of these useful reptiles. There is one group of people, however, who actively seek them out. For hundreds of years the Irula tribe has specialised in catching snakes, mainly for their skins. In 1976 this practice was outlawed by the government, forcing many of the Irula into abject poverty. Salvation came in 1978 when wildlife expert Romulus Whitaker saw a way to help them out – by encouraging them to catch snakes again. Not for skins this time, but for their venom, using an extraction process that leaves the snakes unharmed. The venom is used to create anti-venom serum for the treatment of snakebites. Having donated their venom over a four-week period, the snakes are released back into the wild to resume their valuable rodent-culling function. It took a while for Whitaker and the Irula people to convince the government of the benefits of their venom-collecting enterprise. But convince them they did, and the Irula Venom Centre now supplies up to 80 per cent of the venom for India’s medical needs.


To read more about former contenders: http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/index.php