A Contest For Change: World Challenge 08

It's amazing how some people can race to the moon and stars while others remain languishing in pitiful conditions. However there are initiatives that are improving the lives of many people in what would be considered as less than fortunate communities.

This is what World Challenge 08 is all about. Now running in its third year of competitions the challenge, which is spearheaded by BBC World News and Newsweek, with the help of Shell, seeks to highlight projects and small businesses that promote a sustainable positive impact at the grassroots level.

In 2006 a Sri Lankan papermaking firm won the award for its innovation of using elephant dung as raw material for paper and providing opportunities for community members to take part of the earnings. For 2007, the Peruvian T'ikapapa enterprise bagged the World Challenge top prize for helping the local potato growing communities in the Andes mountains reach a larger potato market.

This year there's a good mix of nominees from South Africa, Colombia, Nepal, Pakistan, Brazil, Paraguay, Kyrgyzstan, two from India and another two from Kenya. Their stories are just awe inspiring from promoting local grassroots livelihood projects to pursuing education for underprivileged communities.

Know more about the incredible and wonderful finalists for World Challenge 08 and be part in helping them continue their life changing initiatives by voting for your favourite project or enterprise. Online voting will end on November 21, 2008. Winners will be announced on December 20, 2008.

The Knight News Challenge: $5M Funding for Big Ideas

"Up for the Challenge?"
The Knight Foundation is setting aside 5 Million Dollars for innovative ideas on digital news media. Referred to as "Digital Experiments in Community News", anybody anywhere are encouraged to submit cutting-edge concepts for technology backed community news projects with the potential of making an impact on real communities.

Last years Knight News Challenge awarded grants to 25 change advocates with prizes ranging from $15,000 to half-a-million dollars. The projects varied from innovative blog series to academic scholarships, from simple web applications to establishing entire media centers. Even MTV got a piece of the action with a $700,000 grant for the Knight Mobile Youth Journalism project which aims to place youth reporters in every state producing video news reports on their mobile phones in relation to the 2008 US elections.

Alberto Ibarguen, President and CEO of Knight Foundation said, "The Knight News Challenge hopes to discover innovative ways of using cyberspace to bring communities together." The foundation will invest some $25 million over a span of five years to fund exceptional community news experiments worldwide. The program is in line with the Knight Foundation's mission to "seed and inspire great journalism everywhere".

Note the following criteria for submission to the Knight News Challenge:

• Use of digital technology - computers, cell phones, the Internet, etc.
• Innovative - It must be different from what others have previously done.
• Access to News and Information - It must provide people what they want to know in a timely manner.
• Community-centered - The project must affect real geographical localities and create a sense of community in people.
  

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There are three categories for the Knight News Challenge contest namely, General (open-source, open standards), Commercial, and the Young Creators Award which is for the 25 years and younger age group.

One can submit as many different ideas as they can come up with. Be sure however not to submit the same proposal on different categories.

Make your mark. You invent it, Knight Foundation will fund it. Deadline for submissions of proposals is on October 15, 2007. Winners will be announced in the Spring of 2008.

Register now at http://www.newschallenge.org and take the challenge.

XO Laptop - The Limited Introductory Offer

"Green with envy? Give 1 to get 1."
THE ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD (OLPC) group which aims to jumpstart the quality of education in developing nations by providing low-cost technology tools such as the XO laptop, has announced that they will be offering the XO laptop on a "Give One Get One" basis.

Dubbed G1G1, the program starts on November 12 and will run for a limited period only. Presumably, Give 1 Get 1 will be offered only within territories of developed nations particularly the USA.

OLPC Founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte emphasized in a keynote speech delivered at Harvard last August that the OLPC is an "education project, not a laptop project.

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The XO laptop has a kid-friendly design and leverages open source software. It is about the size of a textbook, has a wi-fi mesh network, a 7.5-inch TFT screen switchable to full-color mode and reflective "outdoor" mode. It is also probably the most energy efficient laptop in existence, so much so that you can hand-power the machine via cranks, pedal or pull-cord chargers. OLPC is backed by technology giants such as AMD, Red Hat, Google, Nortel and Intel.

Despite being touted as the "$100" laptop, whole donations for the XO are actually priced at $200 which includes shipping and handling (to the beneficiaries' country). OLPC of course accepts any contributions, large or small, which will go to grassroots learning initiatives in least developed nations. For the G1G1 program, which will run for 2 weeks starting November 12, the cost of participation is at $399.

Learn more about the One Laptop Per Child project and the G1G1 program at http://xogiving.org.