News In November in New Dehli, Rolex announced five awards for Young Laureates.
In 1976, Rolex founded the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. In 2009, Rolex introduced awards for Young Laureates to encourage the next generation of leaders. Under the structure of that programme the next awards were due in 2014. However, due to a five-fold increase in applications from young people under 30 for the longstanding Rolex Awards programme, this year’s Jury was asked to select five Young Laureates. Rolex received a record number of 3,512 applications from 154 countries for the 2012 series.
The Young Laureates, who have inspirational projects in Mexico, India, Afghanistan and Paraguay, impressed the Jury with their passion and commitment to create positive change in their own communities and beyond. In presence of the five traditional winners announced earlier this year, the five Young Laureates received 50,000 Swiss francs each, a Rolex chronometer and worldwide publicity for their projects. Presentation of the five Young Laureates!
Maritza Morales Casanova (28 years old), Mexico
A young, highly resourceful environmentalist, Maritza Morales Casanova from the state of Yucatán is determined to raise awareness among young people, in particular underprivileged children, on environmental issues, especially water resources and sustainability. To significantly scale up her grassroots action, she is building a major park dedicated to the environment, which is intended to provide educational activities to 64,000 children each year.
The Yucatán Peninsula faces serious problems, as it is geologically composed of permeable limestone (karst). As rainwater sinks quickly into the rock, water gathers in underground wells with the result that the northern half of the peninsula has no rivers or lakes. With such fragile aquifers, pollution, sewage and waste water mismanagement pose major environmental and health issues. The region, with two million inhabitants, is also a popular tourist destination, which adds to the environmental pressure. It is largely inhabited by Maya-speaking indigenous communities living in extreme poverty, who have little or no awareness of the need for environmental sustainability.
Morales Casanova believes that radical action is needed – and quickly – to educate the next generation and help Mexicans develop healthy patterns in their government policies and their lives in order to protect the environment. The principal aim of her project is to provide high-level environmental education to 50 per cent of students (five to 22 years old) in the Yucatán – approximately 286,000 students during the next five years.
To achieve this, she is building a 7,600 m2 park where local children and their families can learn about environmental issues in an entertaining way, using games designed for children and teenagers. The park, named «Ceiba Pentandra» after a Mayan sacred tree, will be located in Mérida, the capital of Yucatán, which has a population of about one million. It will comprise five areas devoted to educational activities, an environmental library and laboratory for 25 teachers and students, a dormitory to host youth from coastal communities who come to the city’s schools and university, an auditorium, museum, open-air theatre, and an aquaculture training area.
Karina Atkinson (27 years old), Scotland
Karina Atkinson, a highly resourceful Scottish scientist, has an ambitious goal: to promote Paraguay internationally as a destination for sustainable tourism by protecting and developing – through scientific research and community outreach – a natural reserve in the centre of the country.
Landlocked Paraguay, with a population of more than six million, is one of the poorest nations in South America. A boom in farming has boosted the economy, but intensive cattle ranching and soya and eucalyptus cropping have encroached on the natural environment.
Through Para La Tierra, a not-for-profit organisation she co-founded in April 2010, Atkinson is establishing a model of environmental research and education, linked with support to communities living around a 804-hectare reserve, the Reserva Natural Laguna Blanca, in central Paraguay.
Atkinson’s project has two main elements. The first focus is on conservation, scientific research, education and security. Thanks to three full-time, two part-time staff and volunteers, Para La Tierra is proving sustainable. The long-term aim is to provide a scientific basis for the conservation of species and habitats at the reserve and to be a source of information for scientists.
Atkinson’s second focus is ecotourism. Tourists already visit the reserve, but Atkinson wants to draw up to 130 people at a time, principally ecotourists and scientists. The reserve has already hosted more than 150 volunteers, interns and scientists from around the world; 29 projects have been carried out and 10 articles published in scientific journals.
Selene Biffi (29 years old), Italy
Selene Biffi is an Italian social entrepreneur who focuses her work on youth empowerment and education. She aims to establish a school for storytellers in Afghanistan that will preserve traditional Afghan folktales and oral heritage by creating a venue for ageing master storytellers to teach their craft and verbal artistry to younger generations. The skills and practical knowledge acquired will help students uphold the traditional body of tales and learn to create new narratives that carry important developmental messages to impoverished communities.
Biffi seeks to establish a school in Kabul where young, unemployed Afghans will be trained by master storytellers. The school will provide youth with the skills to create powerful oral stories, skills which can be employed by NGOs to transmit contextually relevant and culturally appropriate messages about peace and development across Afghanistan. In this way, Afghan communities will be able to access information on critical issues such as health, food security or natural-disaster preparedness, in a familiar manner.
Sumit Dagar (29 years old), India
Sumit Dagar is an Indian interaction designer with an interest in designing user-centric technology for minority user groups. With millions of blind people in India, Dagar wants to develop a prototype of a Braille phone with a tangible-touch responsive display panel that will give blind people a multitude of functionalities and improve greatly their daily lives.
According to the latest World Health Organization estimates, 285 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired, 22 per cent of who are in India. Dagar wants to help India’s millions of blind people by producing a prototype Braille mobile phone, which he hopes to develop into a smartphone. He began to work on the concept for his innovative device, which integrates an interactive touch-sensitive Braille display panel, alongside his studies for his Master’s degree at the National Institute of Design.
The principle behind Dagar’s phone is simple. The display panel surface is laid out with a grid of tiny bumps whose height can be varied independent of each other. Changes to the height of the components allow the grid to display touch-discernible shapes, figures, maps and simple Braille text. Functionalities planned for the Braille smartphone include the ability for users to: capture images as height-variable maps that can be compared against a saved database of objects and people to allow identification; use global positioning system (GPS) technology with height-variable maps to allow independent travel; and convert text photographed with the device’s camera into Braille.
Arun Krishnamurthy (25 years old), India
Arun Krishnamurthy is a committed young Indian environmentalist who combines his passions for nature, education and youth through his non-profit organisation, the Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI). Rapid and uncontrolled urbanisation in several of India’s major cities is leading to encroachment on many urban water bodies, resulting in the partial or complete loss of biodiversity. Krishnamurthy proposes to tackle this pressing issue with the sustainable, community-based restoration of Lake Kilkattalai in Chennai.
Krishnamurthy has built up an impressive portfolio of work in the environmental sector after quitting a promising career at Google to focus on his passion for developing community participation projects in conservation and environmental education. Through EFI, Krishnamurthy has recruited 900 volunteers through school programmes and street theatre for conservation projects. Most of the volunteers are students aged under 20 years who receive conservation training from Krishnamurthy covering practical environment work, effective communication and how to chart a career as an environmentalist. Krishnamurthy partly finances EFI and its seven part-time staff through Krish Info Media, a communications company he founded after leaving Google.
Krishnamurthy has already cleaned up lakes in New Delhi and Hyderabad. Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, was once known for its lakes and gardens but uncontrolled urbanisation has degraded many of them. Depletion of the lakes has also affected the city’s ability to replenish scarce water supplies via the annual monsoon and urban habitats for the region’s wetland wildlife are literally drying up. The use of urban lakes for dumping of garbage and effluent has also made them a health hazard.
The Rolex Awards for Enterprise were created to foster a spirit of enterprise and advance human knowledge and well-being. They support pioneering work in five areas: science and health, applied technology, exploration and discovery, the environment and cultural heritage. Winners are innovators who typically work outside the mainstream and often have limited access to traditional funding. Rather than reward past achievements, the Rolex Awards provide financial assistance and recognition to individuals embarking on new ventures or carrying out ongoing projects. Grants of 100,000 Swiss francs are awarded to Laureates and 50,000 francs to Young Laureates. The grants must be used to complete the chosen projects.
January 17, 2013
