Seed Awards recognize, support and encourage the delivery of innovative, local, partnership-based solutions to global challenges of environmental stewardship and poverty eradication.

New York, May 30, 2007. The global community of organizations and agencies that constitute the Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (Seed) Initiative today announced that partnerships from Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Sierra Leone, and Vietnam are the winners of the 2007 Seed Awards.

Launched in 2004, the Seed Awards biennially recognize and reward five partnership-based initiatives that combine innovation and entrepreneurship in delivering effective social development and environmentally sustainable programs in their countries. The partnerships also serve as models to inspire new local entrepreneurs, communities, companies and others to join forces in advancing sustainability.

The 2007 recipients were selected following a rigorous 10-month review process that examined more than 230 applications from some 70 countries worldwide. The partnership applicants represent nearly 1,100 organizations drawn from the private sector, non-governmental organizations, women’s groups, labor, public authorities, UN agencies and others.

The five winning partnerships differ in that they address a wide range of issues. They are alike, however, in that each translates internationally agreed-upon environmental and developmental goals—such as those put forth in the UN Millennium Declaration and at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development—into community-based actions that respond to specific regional priorities and needs.

This year’s Seed Award winners:

• In Brazil, Projeto Bagagem, creates unique travel packages that give visitors a first-hand look at local development initiatives and nature reserves in a novel approach to community-based ecotourism;

• In Ecuador, a partnership operating in the Andes has reintroduced native cereal and tuber crops that diversify food production, improve local food security and reduce soil degradation. The partnership then sells surplus yield through a women’s organization it has created in three communities resulting in new economic, financial and marketing engines for the area;

• In Peru, T’ikapapa links small-operation potato farmers also in the Andes with high-value niche markets in urban centers. T’ikapapa promotes biodiversity conservation and environmentally friendly potato production techniques while giving farmers open access to technological assistance and innovation, encouraging local farmer’s associations and propagating the flow of market information;

• In Sierra Leone, a unique partnership between a traditional healers’ association, an academic research institute, and local communities will help to protect biodiversity and provide sustainable livelihoods for local communities through the establishment of the Tiwai Island Health and Fitness Center—a facility to provide health services based on principles of West African ethno-medicine; and,

• In Vietnam, Bridging the Gap uses sustainable cultivation of traditional medicinal plants to develop high value-added products, the manufacturing and proceeds of which improve the livelihoods of ethnic minority communities.

Over the next 12 months, each of the five Seed Award recipients will receive targeted support services specifically designed to expand and extend their activities, turning them from a good project idea into a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable enterprise. Simultaneously, the Seed Initiative will study each recipient’s progress to:

1. Identify and promulgate to other communities the award-winning "best practices;"
2. Provide lessons-learned to assist other partnership practioners; and
3. Use the experiences and results observed in these communities as the basis for recommendations to policy makers and Seed Initiative partners for better supporting, encouraging and implementing locally-based partnerships.

More detailed descriptions of the winners are available at www.seedinit.org. For more information, contact: Ross Andrews, Acting Head of Programme, Seed Initiative Secretariat; +44 7977 218057; ross.andrews@seedinit.org

Seed Awards recognize, support and encourage the delivery of innovative, local, partnership-based solutions to global challenges of environmental stewardship and poverty eradication.