Competing Changemakers: The BBC World Challenge
October 24th, 2007 by Anindita Sengupta
Here is an interesting competition aimed at encouraging global changemakers. An initiative by BBC World and Newsweek, World Challenge 2007 will reward projects and businesses that not only make a profit, but also put something back into the community. The 12 finalists have been chosen and programs profiling the finalists are on at BBC World through this month and the next and you can vote for them on the website. Reality TV with a difference.
Expectedly, most of the finalists are from developing countries. Where there is necessity, there is invention. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Brazil and Vietnam are some of the countries in the running. I think Sri Lanka’s sweet wrappers receycled into fashion accessories and Nepal’s artificial limbs made from waste material are particularly ingenious. Also, sanitary napkins made out of indigenous material in Uganda strike a chord because it’s heart wrenching to think of how many women across the world are denied access to basic hygiene. A commenter on the message board provides perspective:
I live and work here and recently visited a school where Dr. Musaazi had provided MakaPads to the school. For the first time, the girls were having discussions about menstruation and the girls outnumbered the boys in enrollment. I didn’t realize that many girls drop out of school because they simply cannot afford pads and the banana leaves that they use are too unreliable to be out in public. Menstruation in many countries is the end of education and the beginning of too early motherhood. I have visited the place where the pads are made. It’s an amazing story and a wonderful support to young woman in Uganda.
Even if the comment itself is rigged (a possibility that cannot be dismissed in any competition), I think it points yet again to the tremendous effects that basic hygiene and sanitation has on human lives. Another article I read once pointed out how similarly lack of water for washing and bathing contributes to a drop in social standing because cleanliness is inextricably linked with dignity. We see this around us all the time. People who look unclean or smell bad are routinely denied admission into restaurants, salons, shops, supermarkets — all public spaces — and it leads to a systematic rejection, a ‘keeping out’, of a whole section of people. The wealthier patrons of these places seldom stop to think, while turning up their nose or casting distasteful glances, that people seldom choose to be unclean. Most often, they have no options and no access to facilities. The feeling of personal degradation is compounded by lack of social dignity. Expensive water, lack of public toilets, inadequate drainage systems, expensive sanitary napkins — all contribute towards this humiliation.
Coming back to the competition itself, last year’s winner was a paper-making firm in Sri Lanka called ecoMaximus which uses different types of wastes to produce high quality products.
The firm set up shop in Kegalle, Sri Lanka, in 1997, not far from an elephant orphanage. In Sri Lanka there is competition between elephants and a growing human population for land. The proximity of elephants was a boon for the papermakers; for as they soon discovered elephant dung is an ideal raw material for paper products they began a range of elephant-dung paper to draw attention to the plight of the Sri Lankan elephant. This unusual product has found buyers within Sri Lanka and throughout the world.
It would be interesting to see how the winners are doing a year later. How the competition helps them and how their efforts grow or are sustained. I wonder if BBC World has done any follow-up stories on this. The biggest challenge for many development projects is sustainability so it would be a logical next step for the program to look at this aspect.