Tale of green cooking stoves in Brazil tops annual UN storytelling competition

The story of an indigenous family in west-central Brazil which now uses clean, economical and green cook stoves provided through a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project is among 12 winners of an annual storytelling competition and featured in the second edition of a newspaper presented today by the agency.

“As in last year’s issue, these stories highlight UNDP’s critical work on poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, and the environment and sustainable development,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark in a letter to readers. “They remind us that people are and always will be the centre of UNDP’s work.”

The content for the latest edition of The Development Advocate was selected by an international jury based on the 120 submissions from 66 UNDP Country Offices and regional programmes.

This year’s winning selections – Brazil’s Eco-stoves empower indigenous women; Bangladesh’s Empowering women to fight poverty and China’s Farmers plant a seed for a chemical-free future – topped a list of stories by entrants hailing from a wide geographic range, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territories, Sudan, Mongolia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Colombia.

“The common thread running through these stories is the change and benefits we bring to the lives of some of the poorest and most vulnerable individuals around the world,” said Ms. Clark.

The publication was unveiled today at the first regular session of the UNDP Executive Board, held at UN Headquarters in New York.