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:
