UN-backed awards celebrate efforts of young engineers to help the poor
Proposals for designing road bridges in rural Rwanda, ensuring housing in Nepal is more resistant to earthquakes and making better use of waste water from olive oil mills in the occupied Palestinian territory are among the biggest winners of awards co-sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Proposals for designing road bridges in rural Rwanda, ensuring housing in Nepal is more resistant to earthquakes and making better use of waste water from olive oil mills in the occupied Palestinian territory are among the biggest winners of awards co-sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Ten projects from around the world received Mondialogo Engineering Awards – the world’s first prizes aimed specifically at young engineers from developed and developing countries – at a ceremony last night in Mumbai, India, while 20 other projects received honourable mentions and one received a continuation award.
The award laureates, who received €20,000 each, were chosen by a seven-member international jury of scientists and engineers that had whittled the list down from some 3,200 original entries. Each entry had to pair engineers from a developed country with engineers from a developing country.
Entrants were asked to work together on projects that tackle the ambitious set of targets known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially those concerning poverty reduction and sustainable development, and devise practical solutions for the developing nations.
The winners came from: India and Singapore; India and the United States; Nepal and Germany; South Africa and the US; Nepal, the United Kingdom, India and Japan; Guatemala and the UK; Indonesia and Australia; Rwanda and Germany; the occupied Palestinian territory and the US; Kenya and Sweden.
The projects ranged far and wide, from Rwandan bridges and Palestinian olive oil waste water to improving sustainable irrigation in South Africa, replacing oil lamps with solar-charged, battery-operated lamps across the developing world, communicating medical data through optical fibres in Nepal and organized workshops for carpentry, bakery and computer laboratory apprentices in Guatemala.
Announcing the awards, UNESCO said that while not all projects will be implemented, the proposals can still give rise to useful applications, such as finding new ways to purify water, produce biofuels or use solar energy in rural areas.
The awards are part of the Mondialogo Intercultural Dialogue and Exchange initiative launched by UNESCO and Daimler in 2003. This is the second edition of the awards.