Thursday 8 November 2012

Nestle Recognizes work on sand dam technology in Kenya with prize money worth over KES 9 million


Excellent Development and its Kenyan partner African Sand Dam Foundation receive the Nestle CSV 2012 Awards, which will give a further boost to spreading the technology across water stressed areas in Sub Saharan Africa.

Nestle S.A announced the winners of the Creating Shared Value Prize 2012 at the annual Nestle Creating Shared Value Forum held this year in New Delhi, India. The runner up award with a prize money of more than KES 9 million (CHF 100,000) was given to Excellent Development, a UK based not for profit organization and its Kenyan partner, Africa Sand Dam Foundation.


Together, Excellent Development and ASDF work hand in hand to promote sand dams around the world. This Nestle CSV Prize is a recognition of the work done by these two NGOs on pioneering the sand dam technology and the benefits it creates for rural communities. Present at the ceremony to receive the Prize were Simon Maddrell,  Executive Director of Excellent Development,  Cornelius Kyalo and Andrew Musila from ASDF.


Since 2002, Excellent Development and its partners have supported 3,863 self- help group members from 104 communities in Kenya to build 347 sand dams. Since then, group members have dug 1,344 km of terracing, enabling them to grow more food, and planted more than 830,000 trees. This has directly benefited 23,294 members and their families - impacting 342,500 people across Kenya.


The Africa Sand Dam Foundation, based in Eastern Kenya, works with local communities, organized in self -help groups to address their water and food priorities. The communities build sand dams, which are the most cost effective method of capturing rainwater and can be built anywhere where there are seasonal rivers with sandy sediment. They invest at least 40% of the resources needed to complete the project. Once these dams are built they can provide a year round source of water for both drinking and for irrigation purposes.


Every two years, innovative schemes related to nutrition, water and rural development are short listed for the Nestle Creating Shared Value Prize. This year, Nestle has selected one winner and two runners up to share the total prize money of CHF 500,000 (KES 45 million).


The CSV Prize highlights examples of Creating Shared Value in which the funding award helps innovative and commercially viable initiatives to scale up and achieve financial sustainability. Building on Nestlé’s foundations of compliance and sustainability, CSV is the company's approach to doing business. It aims to create value for the company's shareholders at the same time as for the communities in which it operates.

 
The Prize is open to individuals, governmental and non-governmental organizations, academia and social enterprises. This year, more than 600 applications from 76 countries were received. The Board selected an overall winner and two runners up.


The winner of the first prize was Fundacion Paraguaya de Cooperation y Desarrollo, Paraguay and the other runner up was Arcenciel, from Lebanon, who received CHF 300,000 (KES 27 million) and CHF 100,000 (KES 9million).


To learn more about the Excellent Development project, follow the link below:



 

 
 

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