On march 9th, the OECD headquarters in Paris hosted the DAC Prize awards ceremony, an important recognition conferred to the organizations that realize the most innovative development strategies. The peculiarity of the approaches which made it to the Finals is that of being able to be reproduced successfully and efficiently on a large scale.
TCF was one of the 10 finalists, and an Italian “delegation” from Italian Friends of TCF took part in the ceremony, representing TCF’s efforts to provide quality education, especially granting girls’ equal access to quality education in Pakistan.
There were three winners, as jury panel members Julius Akinyemi and Andrew Wyckoff said it had not been possible not to recognize the strongly innovative nature of all three projects, nevertheless emphasizing that all the other finalists have a big impact on their respective realities.
Ranging from the plantation and selling of African cashew nuts, to clinics for the plants and finally to a billing system via mobile phone for the payment of electricity (provided thanks to solar panels). The winners are:
The Awards ceremony, presided by the Deputy Secretary General Douglas Frantz, was not only meant as the conclusion of an isolated event, but gave rise to a constant monitoring by the OECD – the promoter of the Award – of the different realities actively involved in achieving important goals such as quality education and innovation and development of sustainable socio-economic systems. The discussion drew in issues related to international cooperation in the true sense of the word.
The TCF delegation pointed out that “education is key to development”, concisely describing the salient points of the activity of The Citizens Foundation. Laura Notaro (Head of Communications) presented TCF’s work , the goals accomplished in 20 years of activity and its founding pillars: the central role of women and the complete harmony with the local community in which the schools are built. The speech was accompanied by a video, edited by Margherita di Clemente – intern at Italian Friends of TCF – and was concluded with a heartfelt call to children’s universal right to quality education.
The finalists:
- African Cashew Initiative
- The Citizens Foundation
- Europa Re
- Farmer Field Schools (FFS) in Rwanda
- Lesson Study in Zambia
- 5S-Kaizen
- Plantwise
- ReadyPay Solar
- Safecare
- Telemedicine project in Ghana
The ceremony ended with the concluding speech of the President of the OCSE Development Centre, Ambassador Pierre Duquesne.
