The Rockefeller Foundation Announces 8 Winners of the 2012 Innovation Challenges from Innovation Forum 2011

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The Rockefeller Foundation Announces 8

Winners of the 2012 Innovation Challenges

from Innovation Forum 2011

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, June 26, 2012

- Individuals from Around the World to be Eligible for Grants of $100,000 each

NEW YORK

,

June 26, 2012

/PRNewswire/ -- The Rockefeller Foundation,

celebrating 100 years of global innovation, today unveiled the names of the

individuals that have been chosen as the winners of the Foundation's 2012

Innovation Challenges. The winning ideas were developed based on the results

of the Foundation's Innovation Forum in 2011, which gathered a number of

leading global thinkers and innovators in

New York

to generate innovative ideas

for how to address water insecurity, food insecurity, as well as key challenges

posed by urbanization.

The challenge winners, who hail from

Africa

,

Asia

,

North America

and

South

America

, were selected from a group of almost 2,000 entrants from around the

world. The winners will be applying for grants of

$100,000

each to develop their

ideas further.

The Rockefeller Foundation asked innovative people and organizations around

the world to submit ideas on three specific topics – how to use data to create

change that improves the quality of life of poor or vulnerable communities, how

to improve or scale agricultural water use efficiency, and how to encourage

and support young people to enter and stay in farming.

"The selection of our Innovation Challenge winners is the culmination of a

year

-

long process of gathering global leaders, identifying key pressing issues

and challenging the world to develop innovative solutions to these issues," said

Dr. Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. "I am thrilled with the

overwhelming response we received to the challenges and am excited to see

our eight winners put their ideas into action."

The Innovation Challenge winners are:

How to encourage and support young people to enter and stay in

farming:

Mobido Coulibaly – FarmQuest (Mali)

A reality radio program series featuring an exciting, competitive quest by 6

-

8

young people to create the "best new farm." An engaging cast of diverse

contestants each take a small plot of land and seeks to create a vibrant

farming business over a 9-12 month period.

Joseph Macharia – Empowering youth with agricultural information through

Radio and other ICTs. (Kenya)

Radio and ICT

-

based youth empowerment strategy to promote informed

decision

-

making on agricultural development. The program will deliver

knowledge on farming as a business and on value chains and impact programs

that are relevant to youth.

Fatima Oyiza Ademoh – Youth Agro Entrepreneurs (Nigeria)

An initiative to lure and keep youths in agricultural entrepreneurship. Youth

Agro Entrepreneurs operates as a school where youths over 18 years old can

come and learn sustainable farming practices.

How to improve or scale agricultural water use efficiency:

John Duxbury – Layering Raised Bed And Furrowing Technology (United States)

Layering of technologies around the use of raised bed and furrow irrigation to

replace flood irrigation of flat fields to improve water and fertilizer use

efficiencies, address labor shortages and provide agribusiness opportunities.

Amos Winter – Resonating, Viscoelastic Drip Emitters For Low-Pressure, Low-

Cost Drip Irrigation (United States)

Product innovation for a novel drip emitter that will reduce the cost of 1

-

acre

drip irrigation systems by 90%, putting them within reach of small-scale,

subsistence farmers who live off the electrical grid.

How to use data to create change that improves the quality of life of

poor or vulnerable communities in cities:

Rita Bhattacharjee – Kolkata Medical Emergency System (India)

Centralized medical emergency system for

Kolkata

to manage availability of

Emergency Healthcare Facilities and products.

Chelina Odbert – WATSAN Portal: a platform for improving water and sanitation

in slums (Kenya)

An online and phone

-

based platform that helps communities identify and link to

municipal water infrastructure sites to formalize and upgrade water and

sanitation projects.

Pedro Markun/Transparencia Hacker – Open Legislative Data (Brazil)

A data platform that will help

Sao Paulo

residents get official/soon

-

to

-

be official

information regarding their neighborhoods and topics of interest in a timely

fashion.

Additional information on all of the award winners is available on The

Rockefeller Foundation's Centennial website at

http://centennial.rockefellerfoundation.org

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation's mission to promote the well-being of people

throughout the world has remained unchanged since its founding in 1913.

Today, that mission is applied to an era of rapid globalization. Our vision is that

this century will be one in which globalization's benefits are more widely shared

and its challenges are more easily weathered. To realize this vision, the

Foundation seeks to achieve two fundamental goals in our work. First, we seek

to build resilience that enhances individual, community and institutional

capacity to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of acute crises and chronic

stresses. Second, we seek to promote growth with equity in which the poor and

vulnerable have more access to opportunities that improve their lives. In order

to achieve these goals, the Foundation constructs its work into time-bound

initiatives that have defined objectives and strategies for impact. These

initiatives address challenges that lie either within or at the intersections of five

issue areas: basic survival safeguards, global health, environment and climate

change, urban economic security, and social and economic security. For more

information, please visit http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org