| |  | | | World Bank President James Wolfensohn with one of the winning groups at Thursday's awards ceremony |
December 9, 2003—Whether using car tires to reinforce walls in earthquake-prone Turkey or training rats to detect tuberculosis in Tanzania, innovative solutions to local problems are often conceived by creative individuals, who need a bit of financial help to turn their ideas into viable projects. Last week, 47 projects from 27 countries received some US$6 million in seed money to fund creative ideas for tackling local development challenges, at the 2003 Development Marketplace (DM) Global Competition held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington last week. This funding will help to turn the winners’ innovative local ideas into programs that will yield concrete benefits for their communities and help reduce world poverty.  | | Showcase of project booths | |
"At a time when we are in a race to attain the Millennium Development Goals—and achieve a new balance between rich and poor nations—the need for creative ideas and uncommon partnerships is ever greater," said Wolfensohn. "These imaginative individuals, non-governmental organizations, academics, development professionals, and private companies gathered here collectively demonstrate the best of development. They remind us that the world can indeed come together to solve difficult problems and provide innovation during these challenging times." One of the winners, Blandine Le Bourgeois of the Handicap International—Philippine Mission, said "with this prize we will build a boat to sail to remote islands to reach people with disabilities who currently do not have any access to health services." Selected from more than 2,700 applications, this year’s 183 finalists represent new approaches in different fields, including biodiversity conservation, HIV/AIDS prevention, education, small and medium enterprise (SME) development, rural development, health, energy, and more. ‘It is rare in life to meet the best ideas championed by the best people and see them all in one room with a group of people who have made a conscious commitment to believe in these ideas," said Sushmita Ghosh, Development Marketplace jury co-chair and President of Ashoka. | |  | | | Competition judges questioning one of the 183 finalists |
This year’s competition was augmented by over US$800,000 that the Global Environment Facility (GEF) contributed to the award pool. "The GEF is proud to be a partner in the Development Marketplace, which enables social entrepreneurs and local leaders to create and implement projects that benefit local communities. GEF’s contribution will help fund innovative ways of protecting the natural environment, while creating livelihoods and opportunities for the world’s poor," said Leonard Good, the GEF’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman. In addition to general Development Marketplace awards, six special award categories were created this year in partnerships with other funders. These new categories provided funding for projects focused on market-based incentives to strengthen biodiversity conservation, HIV/AIDS, SME development, information and communication technology (ICT), environmental conservation and climate change and, finally, the People’s Choice award, where the public itself was able to vote for its favorite project. The two-day showcase of resourceful thinking and networking opportunities also allowed the finalists, World Bank staff, and visitors from around the world to share ideas and past experiences through organized, and informal discussions collectively known as the Knowledge Exchange.  | | | Back-to-back finalists throughout the Marketplace explaining ideas and ambitions | |
Building on the latest World Bank World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People, the theme of the 2003 Marketplace emphasized service delivery and aimed to provide seed funding for pilot projects that explore new ways of providing effective service delivery to those whom traditional channels have failed. It is hoped that the 47 service-related winning projects may in the future provide an on-the-ground application of the academic work already set forth in the Report. Considered a "different way of doing business" at the Bank, where the competition process emulates a venture approach to innovative project financing, the Development Marketplace (DM) was launched as a recognition that solutions to development challenges can have small beginnings, and are often found by those living closest to local problems. "The Development Marketplace is a way of providing seed capital to people at the grassroots level. It gives us a way of working with people who work on development without going through government and line ministries, and we can directly work with them," said John Wilton, World Bank Vice President for Strategy, Finance, and Risk Management, who oversees the Development Marketplace. "All of these finalists are stars and seeing them all in one place is highly inspirational, and something that only the World Bank can put together. All of these projects are highly innovative but high-risk, and that is something that typically is not getting funded," said Mirjam Schoening, a jury member and Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. | |  | | | Entry to the Marketplace at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington |
This year’s awards were financed not only by the World Bank, but also by a variety of partners in the development community. Funding partners of the 2003 Marketplace include the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), UNAIDS, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), USAID, and Microsoft. Several past DM winners were also present at this year’s Marketplace where they served on the international jury team and led discussions about their own lessons of implementation, finding additional funding sources, and how they are now scaling-up or being mainstreamed into other projects. Some Other Winning Proposals Included: a. Chili as a Tool for Conservation and Development in Zimbabwe. This project promotes the production of chili peppers in the Zambezi Valley of Southern Africa as a way to protect farmers from incursions by elephants, which in turn reduces human-animal conflict. In addition, the chili crop creates a new high-value export product for the farmers. b. Empregar: Job Market Insertion for AIDS Orphans in Brazil. This project seeks to empower poor adolescent AIDS-orphans in Salvador, Brazil by helping them enter into steady, legal jobs that will help break the cycle of poverty they are trapped in. c. Doko Dai Mobile Library, Nepal. This project seeks to raise literacy rates among children and increase employment opportunities for villagers in Nepal’s remote mountainous areas by using traditional channels (Doko Dai) to bring books and educational materials to these communities.
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