SNV is one of the six international prize winners at the prestigious Ashden Awards ceremony in London today. More than 150 project contributions were sent in for these awards.

SNV Vietnam was rewarded for its innovation in tackling the twin problem of dangerous cooking practices and untreated animal waste. In partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, SNV launched a programme to convert the waste into energy via biogas digesters. The digesters provide clean, reliable energy for cooking and heating. They also reduce the health and environmental hazards associated with wood fuels, not to mention, the animal waste. Since 2003, over 80,000 systems have been installed, benefitting more than 400,000 people, with CO2 savings of around 167,000 tonnes per year.

The Vietnamese biogas programme is one of the seven domestic biogas programmes SNV supports in Asia. Since 1992, this resulted in 300,000 constructed biogas plants, improving the quality of life of 1.8 million people.

Articles and photo from: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/snv-netherlands-development-organisation/news/article/2010/07/snv-among-ashden-awards-prize-winners


  

San Francisco--(Business Wire)-- The new study on how technology’s power can transform the lives of the poor has been recently published. W. Robert de Jongh, Regional Director of SNV in Latin America, was one of the experts invited to contribute to the one year-long project.

While it’s understood that technology will shape and possibly revolutionize the futures of developing nations in the years to come, inevitably there will be many new and unforeseen paths and turns throughout the journey. But, without a clearly defined destination, how can organizations devoted to improving living standards and livelihoods throughout the developing world position themselves to identify and spread technologies that improve lives in poor communities?

That is the question that the Rockefeller Foundation asked Global Business Network (GBN), a member of the Monitor Group, to help it explore using scenario planning. On May 25, the results of this year-long collaboration were published in a joint report, titled, “The Future of Technology and International Development.”

Read all press release here. 

Statement by W. Robert de Jongh, Managing Director, SNV in Latin America, on the passing of Coimbatore Krishnarao (known as CK) Prahalad, the Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Business School and a longstanding and outstanding member of WRI’s Board of Directors.

“CK Prahalad was an inspiring thinker and visionary committed to innovative solutions that had the potential to transform the practice of business — relentlessly pursuing that “next practice” through which business could do well by doing good. As one of the father’s of “inclusive business,” Prahalad embodied the wisdom, patience, and intelligence required to catalyse a movement that we as SNV and in his honour, are proud to continue to embrace, advance, strengthen and scale in Latin America and around the world. He will be missed, but his legacy will continue.”


Photo from: http://endlessinnovation.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c07669e20115706e11e8970b-320wi

We have just launched a new webpage on Inclusive Public Policies on SNV in LA's website:
http://www.snvla.org/en/Products/inclusivepublicpolicy.html

SNV in LA secures US$ 400,000 from Ford Foundation for the initiative called "Learning, Systematizing & Scaling the Lessons From Inclusive Business in Latin America" that includes the "Inclusive Business Accelerator" and will start implementing it on April 1, 2010.

The "Inclusive Business Accelerator"  will contribute to improving the livelihoods of at least 50,000 low-income people and foster a sustainable Inclusive Business community of practice of at least five hundred active stakeholders in two years through the: 

1) Formulation/Implementation of no more than five inclusive public policies in Andean countries;

2) Development of an evidence-based Inclusive Business publication that will review and systematize the critical approaches, lessons learned, and standards from practice;

3) Sharing knowledge and information on www.inclusivebusiness.org .

For more information, please contact:  Reintje van Haeringen, Director of SNV's Knowledge Institute, Email: rvanhaeringen@snvworld.org