Nominee's Name: Thembi Ngubane
Nominee's Country: South Africa
Nominee's Organization (optional):
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Thembi Inspired countless people with her fearless public audio diary about living with AIDS in South Africa. Her story eventually reached millions and she became a spokesperson traveling around the world to present her story. She died on June 5th, 2009, at the age of 24.
Link(s) for More Info: http://www.aidsdiary.org/

Your Name (optional):
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional):

Nominee's Name: Nermien Riad
Nominee's Country: Egypt
Nominee's Organization (optional): Coptic Orphans
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Nermien Riad is an Egyptian who emmigrated to America with her family when she was 4 years old. While she visited Egypt periodically with her family as a youth, it wasn't until she was posted to Egypt as part of the US State Department that she got a glimpse of the poverty that faced the citizens of her homeland. In 1988, she visited an orphanage in Cairo, and that visit would change her life and the lives of thousands of children for generations to come.
Appalled at conditions in the orphanage where she volunteered, she was astonished to learn that many children ended up there because extreme poverty had forced their mothers to abandon them to institutions after the loss of the family’s father. She knew she had to do something to help support fatherless children in their own homes, giving them the chance to grow up with family, and reach their full potentials.

At first, she began contacting friends and family spread out around the world throughout the Coptic Christian diaspora to raise funds for the orphanage. When she returned to the US, she realized she had the makings of an organization on her hands, and Coptic Orphans was born. She worked with a few dedicated friends from a corner in her kitchen for the first few years, addressing envelopes with newsletters by hand, sharing the stories of the children she knew in Egypt and asking for help. From there, she set up shop in her basement, and invested in the key components to run a professional non-profit, leaving her comfortable, high-level government job to pursue a Masters in Non-Profit communication so she could more effectively run the organization.

The organization celebrated it's 20th Anniversary in 2008, and had touched the lives of over 14,000 children from fatherless families. Because of her passion, these children were able to stay in their own homes, attend school and in many cases move on to graduate from university. Today, Coptic Orphans has a network of over 300 volunteers spread throughout Egypt who take a personal responsibility for the families in their care, visiting them every week, connecting them to resources which allow them to manage their lives with wisdom and hope.

The organization that started as the passion of one woman has now grown into a 3.5 million dollar operation with four offices around the world, and supporting the families of over 7,000 children from some of the poorest communities in Egypt at any one given time.

She is an inspiration to many, and her biggest joy comes from being able to share stories of hope and inspiration coming from the children in Egypt with all the supporters of the organization who sometimes need a dose of "good news" to keep their hearts as full as the children's.

Link(s) for More Info: www.copticorphans.org
http://www.youtube.com/user/CopticOrphans1#p/u/5/Cfv37-xvdZ8

http://www.youtube.com/user/CopticOrphans1#p/u/9/bSRqZO5klx0

http://www.copticorphans.org/VGP-TV.htm

Your Name (optional): Diana Boeke
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional): Virginia

I nominate Mercy Chidi
Founder of Ripples International
Meru Kenya.

Mercy is a woman - a leader, a social worker, a woman on the frontlines - who began an AIDS relief operation in her hometown of Meru, Kenya (at the base of Mt. Kenya) with just a handful of volunteers, having left her professional position to reach thousands of AIDS victims.

Seven years later, she has built one of the most creative and innovative, expansive AIDS relief operations in East Africa, reaching over 13,000 children, thousands of women and grandmothers, orphans, abused girls, and distressed families spanning over 5 regions of Kenya. All of this in seven short years. From 3 volunteers to a staff of over 50 and a budget well over 1/2 million.

Mercy travels into the eye of the hurricane. Wherever she sees human chaos caused by injustices, abuse, ignorance, or neglect she moves toward the pain - the chaos- to find answers and relief.

Because her motto is, "if not me, then who?" I have watched her boldly step out to deliberately tackle what nobody else would. She was the first in her region to rescue young girls being abused and raped by relatives who saw them as the magic cure for AIDS. What did Mercy do?...built Kenya's second-only abuse shelter for girls ranging from 3 years old to 15. Here she helped deliver a baby to an eleven-year old mother. She lifts the girls out of life threatening family situations, builds their esteem, and guides their next path to healing.

She has challenged and successfully progressed the court systems in her region, to respond to the onslaught of gender violence, particularly focused on young girls. After many years, finally, perpetrators are being sentenced - a testimony of her steel will and determination.

She has created large social campaigns to stop female circumcision, raise AIDS awareness and violence against women.

She has built the second only pediatric hospital in Kenya, so babies and orphans have options. She has rescued orphans and babies from latrines, roadsides, abandonned maternity wards, and abusive families.

Mercy's work has garnered the attention of the US Global AIDS community for her creative programming and relentless willingness to do what it takes. Stephen Lewis Foundation noticed her work in the early years and continues to watch the unfolding promise in this young "under-40" woman leader.

I nominate Mercy because if we want a woman like this to remain encouraged and contributing at this "whip lash speed", her acclaim needs to come from the international community, cheering her on. We all know that our own people, our own home, is typically not where we get our support.

Please vote for Mercy Chidi. She deserves our encouragement and recognition!

Please see her on video on her website at www.ripplesinternational.org

MY NAME:
Linda Higdon (Good friend of Mercy Chidi)
Social Entrepreneur
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

Nominee Name: Stephen Maina
Nominee Country: Kenya
Nominee Organization: DMT Tearfund UK
Nominee email: simainah@yahoo.com

Why this person should be recognized:
I believe for the last 11 years, Stephen has been in the fight against water related diseases through provision of clean water and improved sanitation to the most needy and in desperation in his line of duty. He has touched many in the Countries he has provided this service and brought magnificent change. One notable and current project that I witnessed is what he has done so far in Eastern DRC where he has provided water to a community that has Cholera prone all the years and each year they have been losing family members in the 9 villages that lacked clean water. Today the villagers can smile with tap water in the village tapped from the hills 14km away and distributed to the villages benefiting over 29,000 people. In the year he served in North Darfur at the town of Kebkebiya, he made a significant change through developing of the first ever infiltration gallery from the dry river beds and turning it into a normal water supply for the town, a thing that brought recognition even from the local Chiefs in both factions (Government and the Rebels) as water non-availability also escalated the civil war. He has done much in East Timor, Sierra Leone and Liberia and not to name it in his own Country.

My Name: Michael M. Mutuku
My Organization: Health Humanitarian Expert Consultant
Location: Uganda

http://www.amritapuri.org/

Nominee's Name: Mia Kirshner
Nominee's Country: Canada/USA
Nominee's Organization (optional): I Live Here Foundation
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Mia Kirshner traveled to Ingushetia, Malawi, Burma, Thailand and Juarez to document the untold stories of persons displaced by war, violence, and disease. She then began the I Live Here Foundation which funds literacy programs in Malawi prisons.
Link(s) for More Info: http://i-live-here.com

Your Name (optional): Tara Tuttle
Your Organization (optional): Ball State University
You Location (optional): Indiana

Nominee's Name:Dr.J.Christopher Daniel,M.A.,Ph.D
Nominee's Country: INDIA
Nominee's Organization (optional):GOODWILL SOCIAL WORK CENTRE
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:

Dr.J. Christopher Daniel (born in India,1947) is the founding Executive Director of the Goodwill social work centre (NGO), Madurai, India. He is a former professor of social work and Head-Department of human resources management at the Madurai Institute of social sciences, Madurai, India. He received his master’s degree in Social work with human resources management(HRM) as a field of specialization from the Loyola College (University of Madras), Chennai, India in 1971 and Ph. D in social work/HRM from the Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India in 1988.He holds a Certificate in International interdisciplinary Course on Children’s rights awarded by the University of Ghent, Belgium in 1996.

As an academic with 33 years of service, he has actively involved in professional social work and HRM education and training, social research and field work practice in social work and HRM and has trained many batches of Post graduate students who have specialized in the field of Social work and Human resources management during the period 1972-2005 at the Madurai Institute of social sciences, Madurai, India. Presently, he is a Visiting Professor of Social work and human resources Management and Senior Advisor at the Department of social sciences/Social work, Lady Doak College,(an ecumenical women's Christian college) Madurai, Tamilnadu, India. He has also served as a Visiting Professor of the Department of Management Studies, and the Department of Social work at The American College, Madurai, India during 2005-2006.

He has made a significant contribution to humanity at large through his contribution and operation of the Goodwill social work centre(www.goodwillsocialworkcentre.org), which has been working in the areas of children's rights, children’s rights through artwork, Children’s environmental health rights, Intensive family preservation for dysfunctional families, non-formal employment training for youth, humanitarian aid, community technology services, environment education and action, social research, NGO capacity building, Global Links Initiative(UK)’s networking in Tamilnadu(India) and NGO consultancy.Causes supported by the Centre are wide ranging from social philanthropy to social development in the spirit of the organisation's aims of professionalism based on the principles of scientific humanism in line with the professional social work model in the management of issues concerning children,youth,women,dysfunctional families,NGOs and civil society groups.The Centre is highly professional in its approach and its methods are underpinned by a strong academic research ethos.

His wide academic teaching experience in the fields of social work and human resources management and his professional experience in social research and field practicum in social work for hundreds of his students have provided him with an opportunity to establish Goodwill Social Work Centre in Madurai,India to practise what he has professed. As a Social work educator turned Social entrepreneur he was prompted to set up this social enterprise in 1981 to work with children,youth and young women and their families in distress with an aim to apply the ‘Goodwill social work model’ as a practice mode and an approach’,which he has developed.

He is personally responsible for his organisation's local and international acclaim and achievements. He has to his credit more than 100 articles on various social issues including human resources development related issues published in national and international journals,books and web magazines. He has widely traveled abroad to present scientific papers in international conferences and seminars. His special areas of interest include Professional social work practice, Human resources management, NGO /Civil society governance and management, Project management, training and capacity building for NGOs, Human rights training including child rights, and children's environmental health rights, social research etc. He has had wide professional experience in designing curriculum on Social work, Human resources management, Human resources management training and Development, Family Life Management, Environmental education for children and Child Rights education and training for school children,Children's rights through artwork etc. He has had extensive experience in organizing ‘Intensive Family Preservation (family support services) programs’ for dysfunctional families. He has served as Lead Researcher of various social research projects relating to children,environment,family,non-formal employment etc undertaken by the Goodwill Social work Centre, Madurai, India.

He is the India Representative(Tamilnadu) of the Global Links Initiative,United Kingdom(www.glinet.org) and involved in NGO networking and capacity building initiatives among the GLI(UK) Tamilnadu networkers.

He has not only tried to involve help from friends and organisations and the world but also brought global knowledge to help locally. With a background of implementing new ideas that revitalise,challenge and grow local communities he has created a groundbreaking social enterprise that without doubt touches and enriches the lives of children,youth, women and families in distress also builds NGO capacity through networking initiatives. His professional involvement as a Social entrepreneur can be viewed on the the web link:http://picasaweb.google.com/chrisdangswc

He has won the most prestigious UnltdWorld(UK) Global Impact BRIC( Business, Resources, Insight and Community) award 2009 for social entrepreneurship. He is also a receipient of the 'International Achievers Award for Social Service',2009 conferred by the Indian Achievers Forum,India(www.indianachieversforum.org).


Link(s) for More Info:http://www.vimeo.com/4510544

Your Name (optional):Prof(Mrs)C.Kalaneethy,M.Sc.,M.Phil,BCS
Your Organization (optional):Goodwill social work centre
You Location (optional):Madurai,India

I do nominate KASWESHA Community Resource Centre
P. O. Box 6417-00200-
Nairobi, Kenya.

E-mail: kaswesha@gmail.com

Following link describes the the changes implemented.

http://telecentrecommunity.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kashwesha-community-resource?xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_url

We nominate Kehkashan Development Organization (KDO) Bahawalpur. Pakistan for its remarkable work to combat malaria, installation of handpumps to meet water shortage in Districts of Bahawalpur, Tehsil Mandi Yazman and Cholistan. KDO prepared very useful and informative literature in Urdu Language about preventive measures against fatal disease of malaria. Mandi Yazman in District Bahawalpur is the area with severe water shortage. KDO has installed water handpumps on 20 places to minimize water shortage. The information about objectives and projects of this organization can be found at www.kehkashan.webs.com

Nominee's Name:
Nominee's Country:
Nominee's Organization (optional):
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
Link(s) for More Info:

Your Name (optional):
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional):

Nominee's Name: Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop
Nominee's Country: United States of America
Nominee's Organization (optional): Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Free Minds introduces young inmates to the transformative power of books and creative writing. By mentoring them and connecting them to supportive services throughout their incarceration into reentry, Free Minds inspires these youths to see their potential and achieve new educational and career goals.

Link(s) for More Info: http://www.freemindsbookclub.org

Nominee Name: Cecilia Masekereya and the women of Shingirirai Trust
Country: Zimbabwe
Organization: Shingirirai Trust, Harare
Why this person should be recognized: Cecilia has overcome the myriad challenges of HIV/AIDS and a harsh economic environment to lead the women of Shingirirai into developing a unique grassroots organization that supports the most vulnerable children and their caregivers in the community. Cecilia and her highly dedicated team of women work every day to bring light and hope into the lives of hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children aged 3-6 years in a quality pre-school program that gives them a great headstart in life. This appproach to empowerment is underpinned by an ongoing upskilling program that allows women with little formal education to assume leadership roles in the community as well as moving towards income generation. Cecilia and the women of Shingirirai are developing a simple and replicable model of community leadership and inspiring others to take on the challenges in their own communities.
Links:www.shingirirai.org

Nominee's Name: Manfred Nowak
Nominee's Country: Austria
Nominee's Organization (optional): UN Special Rapporteur on Torture
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Manfred Nowak started 2009 by calling for criminal proceedings to be instigated against Bush and Rumsfeld for their endorsement of torture. More recently he was thrown out of Zimbabwe before being able to commence his investigations.

Inbetween, he has been involved in condemnation of the Sri Lankan and Iranian governments for their treatment of military and political opponents.

Link(s) for More Info:http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/01/hbc-90004250

Your Name (optional): Bill Gunyon
Your Organization (optional): OneWorld UK
You Location (optional): London

name:Jacquiline Kowa
country: Kenya
Organization:Population services international- Kenya
Why this person should be recognized:she has worked with communities at the coast Province to anable acess clean drinking water.
Through already existing community groups she has linked the community with water purifying additives, in thi case Water guard and purr.
She is also careful to mentor other youth and encourage their participation in community development activities.Iam a beneficiary.

Nominee's Name: Dr. Jane Aronson
Nominee's Country: US
Nominee's Organization (optional): Worldwide Orphans Foundation

Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
Known as the “Orphan Doctor,” Dr. Jane Aronson is a pediatrician specializing in adoption medicine and orphaned children worldwide. As Founder and CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO), Dr. Aronson is passionately committed to ensuring that the world’s 145 million orphans become healthy, independent, productive members of their communities and world. In 1997, Dr. Aronson founded WWO, a leading U.S.-based international organization that works to transform the lives of the world’s orphans by addressing their medical, developmental, psychosocial and educational needs.

Overseeing the dramatic expansion of WWO’s programming and strategic partnerships to serve the thousands of the world’s orphans is a specific accomplishment for Dr. Aronson. Dr. Aronson directs WWO’s pioneering work that provides educational programs that keep children in school and lifesaving health care services that offer nutritious meals and ongoing medical assistance, including antiretroviral drugs to children living with HIV/AIDS. The organization’s work also broadens the horizon of orphaned children by engaging them in arts, humanities, and sports programs. Since 1997, Dr. Aronson and WWO have served more than 10,000 orphans around the globe.

Her visionary leadership has helped to forge powerful partnerships with influential NGOs like the Clinton Foundation, governments, and the private sector to bring holistic care and treatment to thousands of orphans worldwide.

After nearly a decade of treating thousands of newly-adopted children and medical missions to orphanages where she witnessed appalling and squalid living environments, Dr. Aronson envisioned a world where orphans have as bright a future as any child. She started WWO to bring the world’s orphans opportunities and life skills to become future leaders in their countries. An adoptive mother of two sons from Ethiopia and Vietnam, Dr. Aronson recognized that most of the world’s orphaned children would never be adopted. WWO seeks to be a “global parent” offering orphans a nurturing and caring environment to survive -- and thrive.

Orphaned children become parentless due to circumstances beyond their control. With AIDS devastating the developing world, Dr. Aronson’s organization is committed to strengthening local capacity and providing long-term medical care to every HIV/AIDS-positive orphan it serves. In Ethiopia and Vietnam, WWO was the first nongovernmental organization to treat orphans with antiretrovirals and train local pediatricians and nurses in the care of children with HIV/AIDS. WWO’s medical approach coupled with development programs has given thousands of children impacted by AIDS a new lease on life. Her compassionate work has inspired others to give back through the WWO Orphan Ranger Service volunteer program.

Dr. Aronson considers every orphaned child served by WWO as her own, and uniquely approaches programming from the perspective of a mother, pediatrician, and development worker. Her organization’s community-based approach impacts, not just children living in orphanages, but whole communities benefit from the WWO-supported schools and health clinics. Dr. Aronson believes the solution to ending the world orphan crisis is not through international adoption, but by rebuilding communities, helping families to grow and stay together, and aggressively tackling the root causes of why children are parentless.

Link(s) for More Info:
WWO website—www.wwo.org
Dr. Jane Aronson, Founder and CEO -- http://www.orphandoctor.com/
WWO news articles - http://www.wwo.org/discover/?p=discover_media_in_the_news

Nominee's Name: Mo Hannah

Nominee's Country: USA

Nominee's Organization (optional): Battered Mothers Custody Conference

Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Mo Hannah organizes the Battered Mothers Custody Movement in Albany, NY every year - for the past 6 years. It is not widely known that battered women can often lose custody of their children. This happens for several reasons - they are not believed, don't have enough evidence/witnesses, they look "unfriendly" in family courts with friendly parent policies, etc. In fact, these women not only lose custody, they can be fined or jailed for "false allegations" or for protecting children from an abuser and "restricting access" to those kids. Some have gone to jail rather than hand custody over to an abuser, some have fled the country. Fathers Rights groups have posed a problem for battered women, as well. Some call them the "abusers lobby" because some of their members have charges and convictions against them. In some countries, they've been violent. Mo Hannah has received death threats for her work. While many fathers have legitimate concerns, those involved in the FR groups have often attacked protective services for women - they've sued domestic violence shelters, want to limit restraining orders, blocked funding for pro bono legal help for victims and attack the Violence Against Women Act. Mo Hannah has organized conferences to help raise awareness about battered women losing custody and about the dangers this has posed for children - dangers which have included injuries and death. This is an issue that affects public health and human rights. It's also international as the Fathers Rights groups are in many developed countries - Europe, India, Australia, etc.

Link(s) for More Info: http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/
Also: www.stopfamilyviolence.org and www.leadershipcouncil.org

Your Name (optional): Joan Dawson
Your Organization (optional): Family Court Reform Coalition
You Location (optional): USA

Nominee's Name: Abdelfattah Abusrour
Nominee's Country: Palestine
Nominee's Organization (optional): Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Dr. Abusrour is founder and initiator of the philosophy of Beautiful Non-Violent Resistance through performing and visual arts, culture and education as means of non-violent self expression in the midst of the violence of occupation, and its injustice. He is initiators of many programs that promote arts as means of building bridges and finding the peace within people, and creating partnerships among Palestinian children and youth and others on international level through theatre and dance tours, photography and video. He was initiator of the first outdoor film festival in Palestine, first mobile cinema program, first sports for social change program for women in a refugee camp in Palestine, first Palestinian folktale festival, first mobile beautiful Resistance program with a van circulating with Theatre, dance, music, painting, games library trainers in different refugee camps and villages training more than 1000 children in these fields.
Dr. Abusrour is great defender of human and children rights, and he was the first Palestinian to figure on Google Earth as Human rights activist, and the first Palestinian Ashoka Fellow.
Link(s) for More Info:
1. http://www.alrowwad-acts.ps

2. Interviews on TV during Theatre tour in the US, July 18th, 2009: part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn-NxwNguvA
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B9KuMy_aRw&feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PhIwouS8nk&feature=related

3. Interview at Grit TV in New York, July 26th 2009 http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/08/14/al-rowwad-blame-the-wolf/

4. Mobile Beautiful Resistance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_JwAtdj8P0

Dr. Abusrour can be quoted saying: "We do not have the luxury of despair". "Everybody is a change maker and nobody has the right to say it is hopeless and I can't do anything". "We owe to leave our children and the generations to come a better legacy than the one we inherited; they deserve that every day that comes to be more beautiful than the day that goes"


Your Name (optional):
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional):

Moni Rani, Bangladesh, Co-ordinator, Dalit Women's Forum

We want our children to have the opportunities of education - to be teachers, doctors and engineers - the chances we could never dream of. Moni Rani

More than 260 million people worldwide continue to experience discrimination based on their caste and practices linked to untouchability. This hidden apartheid of segregation leads to extreme forms of poverty, exploitation, and violence. One third of the world’s poor people are Dalit and caste discrimination is one of the most severe and forgotten human rights problems in the world - it is a major threat to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. There are an estimated 5.5 million Dalits living in Bangladesh. Many are descendents of people brought from India by the former British colonial powers to do menial work. Though they have played a significant role in Bangladesh’s development, Dalits are incredibly poor. In Dhaka, Dalits live in chronic poverty in so called ‘colonies’ and are deprived or excluded from adequate housing, health care, sanitation, transport and from participating in public spaces or places of worship. Dalits often have difficulty enrolling or accessing schools and hospitals, and approximately 96% are illiterate. Dalit communities experience daily insecurity and violence with usually no recourse to justice. In a country where 84% of its 137 million people live on less than $2 a day, Dalit women, excluded both by caste and gender, are the poorest of the poor.

In the face of this entrenched oppression and extreme poverty a small but powerful group of Dalit women have found the courage and strength to organise their communities and to demand change.

The leader who has inspired them is Moni Rani, Co-ordinator and founding member of the Dalit Women’s Forum. From a tiny room she is educating her community and raising awareness about the existence, culture and problems of Dalits in Bangladesh. An eloquent and powerful speaker she lobbies the Government and international donors for the equal treatment of Dalits, for their inclusion in development and for their to tackle caste discrimination. The Forum have set up income generation and health projects that are already making tangible improvements and reducing the poverty of Dalit women. They provide human rights and literacy training, legal and health advice, support with family mediation and are setting up simple financial services so for the first time women can access credit, save or take out insurance.

Very few Dalit children go to school and as a child Moni Rani was the first Dalit girl to be allowed due to pressure from her father. Throughout her life she has faced discrimination, violence and attacks - she has also faced criticism from her own community. We are nominating her for this award in recognition of her work, her vision and her success.

Nominated by - Bethan Cobley, One World Action, UK

Nominee's Name: Ursula Sladek
Nominee's Country: Germany
Nominee's Organization (optional): Elektrizitätswerke Schönau Verwaltungs GmbH
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:

As Chernobyl rained radioactive waste on playgrounds across Europe, Ursula Sladek [www.ashoka.org/usladek] lay stuck in bed with a broken leg, unable to physically restrain her children and keep them indoors. She and the rest of her town spent days worrying about problems as simple as the safety of their food supplies as they waited for government action. None came.

Parents for a Nuclear Free Future fought nuclear power by using energy saving competitions to reduce the town’s need for such power in the first place. Next, Ursula began to move the power sources closer to the town to reduce energy inefficiency. She and her organization restored decaying hydro electric plants and even retrofitted swimming pools to produce thermal power.

But when all her efforts could not convince the utility monopolies to include environmental incentives in their contracts, Ursula set out to convince the town to ditch the power company. Her organization published a 400 page long study on the benefits of localizing energy production, got pro bono support from fifteen of the country’s best advertising firms, and eventually raised the financial capital and popular support to buy back the grid. In July 1997 EWS bought the grid, and the company broke even in 2000. The company has boasted an annual growth rate of 20-30% ever since.

The company she founded [www.ews-schoenau.de] to localize electricity production revolutionized the meaning of public ownership. Citizens of her town now produce their own electricity at home and sell what they save to the energy grid. Because of the short distance between the plant and the bulb, this electricity loses little potency as it travels the power lines and is three times more efficient than centralized production. With this model, ninety five percent of the power from Ursula’s company is renewable – None is nuclear. As more cities from Germany and abroad replicate her model, she has gotten that much closer to a world where her children will radiate only out of joy and not out of nuclear contamination.

Link(s) for More Info:
www.ews-schoenau.de
http://www.ashoka.org/usladek

Your Organization (optional): Ashoka
You Location (optional): Washington, DC

Nominee's Name: Alasdair ‘Al’ Harris
Nominee's Country: Madagascar
Nominee's Organization (optional): Blue Ventures
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:

While tagging sharks off the coast of South Africa, zoologist Al Harris [www.ashoka.org/aharris] pondered a void in marine research. Just up the continent off the coast of Madagascar were some of the world’s largest coral reefs, but they remained undocumented and vulnerable to insatiable fish markets. To research and protect these magnificent waters, Al would have to start from scratch. But, with neither money nor accreditation, he was at the mercy of foundations that expected him to get a doctorate degree before they would fund his work. Rather than delay conservation with five more years of education, Al launched an ecotourism business to enlist volunteers to collect the data as they were enjoying the colorful underwater view of Madagascar’s reefs.

As Al’s findings confirmed, the reefs were suffering from global warming and over fishing. Self imposed limitations were absent because of the amount of time it would take for a fishing village to see positive results. Al’s company Blue Ventures [www.blueventures.org] began to fix this problem by targeting one of the area’s eight legged cash crops: Octopi. By choosing to protect an animal that could mature and replenish itself in just months, Al wasted little time building the local villages’ appreciation of seasonal no take zones.

Al launched the world’s first community-run Marine Protected Area (MPA) for octopus in 2004 in Madagascar, which resulted in a significant increase in octopus fishing yields and mean size, increasing earnings of fishers. Within two years, twenty three additional villages embraced their conservation scheme for octopi and Madagascar’s government adopted it in national legislation. Velondriake—the largest community managed marine protected area in the Indian Ocean—demonstrates the region’s first truly replicable blueprint for community-based marine and coastal conservation planning.

Beyond octopi, Green Turtles, and hammerheads, Blue Ventures has also taken some less photogenic but arguably tasty animals into its protective flippers. It has started the world’s first sea cucumber farming project to help the villages continue supplying the Orient with culinary delicacies without completely depleting the species.

Now Blue Ventures and its network of seafaring communities are expanding into other islands including Fiji and Malaysia. Al’s vision is to scale this model for maximum impact: tens of thousands of tropical marine communities in the Indian Ocean alone could benefit from this approach to marine conservation. They are also roping in fishing companies as a new ally as they use their research to prove the benefits of conservation for both the sea and the dinner plates that depend on it.

Link(s) for More Info:
www.blueventures.org
http://www.ashoka.org/aharris
http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/501930

Your Organization (optional): Ashoka
You Location (optional): Washington, DC

Nominee's Name: Bart Weetjens
Nominee's Country: Tanzania
Nominee's Organization (optional): APOPO
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:

The threat of death by mines in Africa has driven innumerable people from their farms and communities. Until recently, humanitarian operations responded by sending mechanical detectors and imported dogs to restore the land. It seemed that true healing was beyond reach: In the same breath Africa cleared its mines, it became more indebted to Western technologies.

But starting in 1998, Belgian born Buddhist monk Bart Weetjens [www.ashoka.org/fellow/weetjens] began de mining Africa with a smaller and much lower maintenance mechanism. Many years ago, he quit military school out of disgust for war and gave up his childhood hamster business to prevent the critters he sold from becoming snake feed at the local pet shop. In the same spirit of peace and interdependence, Bart left his budding career in product development behind and promoted a more sustainable solution to African de mining: HeroRATS [www.herorat.org].

While less glamorous and affectionate than machines or dogs, African Giant Pouched Rats have an extraordinary sense of smell and store and find pockets of food in the model of a perfect mine detector. They can detect mines and even tuberculosis with their sense of smell. With training, Bart has turned these rats into heroes, heroes that are jumping continents as countries like Colombia adapt Bart’s strategy for their own demining projects.

Bart and his organization APOPO [www.apopo.org] have found a way to keep the cycle of healing at home at a minimal price with the fastest and even most harmonious result. Having gotten this far, Bart has even begun to break through the Middle Ages stereotype of nasty, plague carrying rats by having his rats send letters and take on a personality.

Link(s) for More Info:
http://www.apopo.org/
http://www.herorat.org/
http://www.ashoka.org/fellow/weetjens

Your Organization (optional): Ashoka
You Location (optional): Washington, DC

Nominee's Name: Nicole Rycroft
Nominee's Country: Canada; originally from Australia
Nominee's Organization (optional): Canopy
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:

Nicole Rycroft went from being a human barrier between a logger’s saw and the bark of a tree to using market incentives to make the last edition of the Harry Potter series the greenest book in publishing history. Nicole began as a tree hugger of the literal sort, stopping loggers from cutting ancient trees by standing between them and the forests. During one particular iteration of her routine, she realized that physical intervention was only a tactic – It would require a comprehensive strategy to protect the forest from fragmentation and charm loggers, printers, publishers, and writers into changing their ways.

With that, Canopy germinated, sprouted, and has grown as strong as some of the moss bedazzled boreal beauties that Nicole works to preserve. After significant progress in nudging printers to stock Ancient Forest Friendly paper, Nicole’s hard work achieved a breakthrough nothing short of wizardry. She collaborated with J. K. Rowling and publishers to use recycled paper in the 5th and 6th editions of Harry Potter, and then made the final edition the greenest book in publishing history. This saved hundreds of thousands of trees and millions of gallons of water.

Wasting not a moment on celebration, Nicole worked with Canada Geographic and got their June 2008 copy printed on paper made with agricultural waste from wheat production. With this victory, she proved that magazine paper – the highest quality form of commercial paper stock – could come from waste materials. Nicole and her team at Markets Initiative are leading the effort to diversify the commercial paper fiber basket in North America so that the “wheat sheet” and other alternatives to traditional paper can further substitute for ecologically unsustainable printing stocks.

Slowly, the world is creeping towards Nicole’s dream – That our children will be in awe when they hear that paper was once made from forests.

Link(s) for More Info:
http://www.canopyplanet.org/
http://www.canopyplanet.org/index.php?page=the-markets-initiative-harry-potter-timeline
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Magazine/jun08/ednotebook.asp
http://www.ashoka.org/fellow/rycroft

Your Organization (optional): Ashoka
You Location (optional): Washington, DC

Nominee's Name:Jürgen Griesbeck
Nominee's Country: Germany
Nominee's Organization (optional): Streetfootballworld e.V.
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:Citizen organizations around the world use football (also know as soccer), as a way to reach out to young people. While these groups have various goals—safer streets, better schools, improved health, a cleaner environment—they have a powerful tool in common. Jürgen Griesbeck is building a worldwide network of citizen organizations that use football as a tool for social change, helping them to find new partners, and opening up the resources and recognition of the professional football industry and the broader public.
Link(s) for More Info: http://ashoka.org/fellow/jurgen

Your Name (optional):Michael Langguth
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional): Berlin

Nominee's Name: Andreas Heinecke
Nominee's Country: Germany
Nominee's Organization (optional): Dialogue Social Enterprise
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
Link(s) for More Info: http://ashoka.org/node/3661

Your Name (optional): Michael Langguth
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional): Berlin - Germany

Nominee's Name: Bhairavi Desai

Nominee's Country: USA/India

Nominee's Organization (optional): New York Taxi Workers Alliance

Why This Person Should Be Recognized: Her tireless efforts for almost 15 years to work for the rights of immigrants and poor people in the United States with courage and fearlessness

Link(s) for More Info:
http://www.nytwa.org/
Profile of Desai in Time.
The protest generation. Rediff, May 99. Article about Desai, Ananya Bhattarcharjee and other Indian-American activists.
Profile of Desai in News India-Times by Arun Aguiar.
Ms Foundation names Desai as one of its top 10 role models.
Struggle of the Taxi Driver, an article by Desai in Sangat Forum.
A work profile, also in Sangat.
Less successful than the next, an article about the South Asian taxi drivers in NYC, by Elizabeth Kolsky in Sagar magazine.
New York's cabbies show how multi-coloured racism can be. NYT, July 99.
Barnard forum hosts lecture on cabbies. India Abroad, 1 Oct 99.

Your Name (optional): Aleyamma
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional):

Bhairavi Desai is the founding member of the Taxi Workers Alliance in New York, a union representing the approximately 3,000 taxi drivers in New York City. Desai was born in Gujrat, India, and came with her parents to Harrison, New Jersey when she was 6 years old. Her father was a lawyer in India, but was unable to find work and had to consequently work at a grocery store.

She received a degree in Women's Studies from Rutgers University and following that, worked at Manavi, the South Asian women's organization in New Jersey that worked with victims of domestic violence. In May 1998, the then 27-year-old labor activist went head-to-head with the city's combative mayor, organizing one of the biggest 24-hour taxi strikes in New York history to protest city policing of the industry. A history and women's studies graduate from Rutgers, Desai burned with a passion to take up the fight of the cab drivers, some 60 percent of whom, like her, are immigrants from South Asia, many of them working up to 80 hours a week for as little as $18,000 a year without health benefits, or even any certainty that they will be paid.
Desai's family had emigrated from Gujarat to Harrison, N.J., when she was six years old. Her father, who had been a lawyer in India, had trouble finding work and resorted to running a grocery store, and some of Desai's earliest memories were of racist attacks by skinheads. "I remember being chased down the street," she says. "I remember the hostility, and that politicized me." After graduating from Rutgers, she joined New York's Taxi Workers Alliance, where she is now staff coordinator. "I wanted to organize around issues of labor and class," says Desai. "I wanted to organize the immigrants, and it was important for me to go beyond what the AFL-CIO was doing. It was important to focus on life issues and not just the labor."
Desai bridged the ethnic, religious and regional differences among South Asian cab drivers by emphasizing that everyone is subject to the same difficulties. "We speak more than 100 languages," she says, "and yet there is a common language of exploitation that we all know. Because of our common goals, we were able to organize a common front." Now she plans to organize a South Asian Labor Alliance linking workers in the U.S. with those on the subcontinent. "Because our countries are underdeveloped, people are forced to migrate to countries that are often very hostile to them," says Desai. "It is important for us to have solidarity with workers in the Third World. They are not the ones who are stealing the jobs."

Nominee's Name: Sean Corne
Nominee's Country: USA
Nominee's Organization (optional): Off the Mat Into the World
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
Seane should be recognized because her work is so broad reaching and touches so many lives. She has developed an organization that trains yoga professionals (and others who are interested) to take their compassion for people and their passion for social issues into their local and global communities in an effort to make sustainable positive change. In essence, she is opening the doors for thousands of individuals to make lasting contributions to their communities both locally and globally.

Link(s) for More Info: http://www.offthematintotheworld.org/

Your Name (optional): Debbie M
Your Organization (optional):
You Location (optional): Colorado

Nominee's Name: Rose Williams and the staff of BioWatch
Nominee's Country: Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa
Nominee's Organization (optional): BioWatch
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
Rose leads a 4 person staff at Biowatch. Their mission is to prevent biological diversity from being privatized for corporate gain.

Biowatch aspires to an environment where people control their food supply systems, where the benefits from commercial use of biological resources are fairly shared and where ordinary citizens are encouraged to help make policy choices about new technologies, such as, genetic modification. Biowatch is working towards a future where there is no hunger, where there is social justice and where our land, water and air is protected.

In June of this year Biowatch celebrated a huge victory against Monsanto in the South Africa courts. This was the culmination of a 9-year legal battle that started when Biowatch requested official and supposedly public information from the South African government about the planting of GM foods in South Africa.

Press Release from Biowatch June 3, 2009. http://www.biowatch.org.za/main.asp?show=65:
“From 2000 [Biowatch] sought information from the state about releases of genetically modified crops (GMOs). When no such information was forthcoming, Biowatch challenged the state in court.

Monsanto South Africa applied to join the case on the side of the state. Monsanto is an agrichemical and seed multinational corporation which has been at the forefront of selling GM crops and patented herbicides in South Africa.

In the judgement of the Pretoria High Court in February 2005, Biowatch won the right to most of the information it had requested, but the verdict ironically declared that Biowatch should be responsible for Monsanto's considerable legal costs.
[Biowatch appealed] The judgment would not only affect future rights of civil society to public information, but would also address the chilling effect experienced by public interest organizations if they use the courts to secure constitutional rights.

The original hearings in Pretoria drew crowds of sympathizers protesting government's tolerance of the massive expansion of GMOs in South Africa.”

Later on June 3, Biowatch finally learned that the court had unanimously set aside the costs order awarded against Biowatch in favor of Monsanto and further awarded legal costs in the High Court hearings in favor of Biowatch and against the state. http://www.biowatch.org.za/main.asp?show=66

I nominate Rose Williams and the staff of Biowatch for standing up to the South African government and Monsanto in their work to promote food security.

Link(s) for More Info: Biowatch website: http://www.biowatch.org.za/
Your Name (optional): Gillian Wilson
Your Organization (optional): IDEX (International Development Exchange)
You Location (optional): San Francisco, USA.

Nominee's Name: Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi
Nominee's Country: India
Nominee's Organization (optional): Peoples’ Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR)
Why This Person Should Be Recognized:
http://www.ashoka.org/node/2851

http://www.dignityfoundation.com/pdf/DD-Oct-08/Dr%20Lenin%20Raghuvanshi.pdf
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36130&Itemid=1&issueid=101§ionid=3&limit=1&limitstart=2
Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi is the symbol of resistance to millions of Dalits fighting for dignity in India. Lenin is credited with changing the discourse on Dalit Politics in India and bringing into focus an innovative "people centric" approach to reclaim "human dignity" in a caste ridden Indian society. The gamut of Lenin's activities reflects his personal and ideological span and provides credibility and a sense of completeness to the work he does. His care for details, meticulous planning, diligent patience, and sincere advocacy of the issue of the marginalized, has made millions of his supporters optimistic about a dignified future.

Lenin's views on caste, conflict and social change took shape while he worked with bonded laborers. He was born into a high caste Hindu family which he describes as "feudal." He noticed that not a single child bonded in the sari or carpet industries came from an upper caste, even though some high-caste families were often just as poor as the lower castes. He realized that caste, not class, was at work. By the end of 1996, Lenin was championing the rights of lower-caste people. Early experiences taught him that confrontation was dangerous and not the most effective method. Increasingly, Lenin recognized caste in all kinds of social conflict and envisioned a movement that could break the closed, feudal hierarchies of conservative slums and villages by building up local institutions and supporting them with a high profile and active human rights network.

As a self taught Dalit ideologue, Lenin understood from the beginning that village in India is the cradle of exploitation. Instead of tampering with the symptoms, 'caste' needed to be tackled by both its horns. On the one hand he created a democratized structure for the 'voiceless' to enable them access to the constitutional guarantees of modern India and on the other, his innovative advocacy forced the 'state' to sensitize its mechanisms to deliver social justice in a manner where Justice is not only done but perceived to be done.

Lenin conceived of a folk school which not only enabled empowerment of the poor, but also endowed them with the ability to access information and justice through the constitutional mechanism of the state.

To translate policy into practice, Lenin has begun working on the latest part of his strategy, Jan Mitra Gaon, or the People-Friendly Village . These villages have durable local institutions that work to promote basic human rights in the face of continuous discrimination. Lenin has adopted three villages and one slum as pilot projects, which include reactivating defunct primary schools, eradicating bonded labor, making sure girls get education, and promoting non-formal education. The village committees comprise at least 50 percent Dalits, and seek to realize greater political representation of Dalits on village councils. The heads of the village committee and village council, a government representative, and a PVCHR employee will serve as a conflict resolution group and form the People-Friendly Committee. The approach of the organization is two-fold: to have a strong grassroots organization to work for democratic rights of those in marginalized communities and second, to create the structure and dynamics to receive the assistance of national and international institutions.
Lenin's work marks a shift in the Indian human rights movement, which has been reluctant to address injustices in the name of caste as a fundamental human rights issue. He is one of only a handful of activists to declare that such discrimination goes against democratic principles by promoting inequality. By working from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh–one of the most traditional, conservative, and segregated regions in India–Lenin demonstrates his resolve.

With meager resources, but rich with confidence and conviction, Lenin in a short period of time has managed to amplify the voice of the marginalized in national and international fora through "Peoples SAARC", rehabilitation and resettlement of weavers of Varanasi; Benaras Convention; UP Assembly Election Watch; prevention of torture; voice against hunger and many such activities. Recognition by the international community of Dr Lenin's work is indeed the recognition for the millions whose hopes and aspirations rest on his slender shoulders.
His works has been acknowledged not only national level but also international level when he Gwanju Human Right Award has been given to him in 2007 by May, 18 Memorial Foundation of South Korea and ACHA Peace Star Award for 2008 by Association for Communal Harmony in Asia USA.


Link(s) for More Info:
http://www.universalrights.net/heroes/display.php3?id=101
www.pvchr.org
www.youtube.com/pvchrindia
www.pvchr.blogspot.com
www.sapf.blogspot.com
www.antiwto.blogspot.com
www.dalitwomen.blogspot.com
www.lenin-shruti.blogspot.com
Your Name (optional): Tanveer Ahmad Siddiqui
Your Organization (optional): Citizen Front
You Location (optional): Varanasi

Nominee's Name: Shai Reshef
Nominee's Country: Israel
Nominee's Organization (optional): University of the People
Why This Person Should Be Recognized: After twenty years in the international education arena, Shai Reshef discovered one issue that unites countries, cities and states around the globe—the need for improved and accessible education. In an effort to democratize higher education, Shai founded University of the People (UoPeople), the world’s first tuition-free online academic institution, a venue for learning regardless of economic or geographic restraints.

By adapting the principles of social networking to academia, Shai created a global chalkboard for all students. UoPeople is an alternative to nothing. It offers those who otherwise would not have the opportunity to attend college, to learn from their peers around the world and gain the building blocks for a better life. Launched in January 2009, Shai’s pioneering initiative fulfills a personal desire to give back to society and develop the world through knowledge and academics.

Classes began at UoPeople in September with 179 students from 40 countries. Term 2 began in November with 120 students from 47 countries including Afghanistan, Thailand, Sudan and Zambia, demonstrating the global breadth and need for the university.


Link(s) for More Info:
University of the People Web site
www.uopeople.org
New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/education/26university.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1259594690-Jrc0714eoyfEx87/ouPodg
Fast Company
http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2009/shai-reshef