Innovation Awards Winners 2014

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Category: General Content

Published on Monday, 24 November 2014 18:49

The Nelson Mandela - Graça Machel Innovation Awardscelebrate civil society activism by rewarding an organisation, individual activist and young person for their excellence, innovation, and brave risk-taking. Since the Awards were launched by Graça Machel in 2004, 24 projects in 19 different countries have received this honour.

THE WINNERS OF THE 2014 NELSON MANDELA - GRACA MACHEL 

INNOVATION AWARDS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED!

Youth Winner: Jerome Cowans (Jamaica)comes from the violence-torn neighbourhood of Tel-Aviv in Kingston, Jamaica.At the age of 13, Jerome recognised that there was a need for  someone to provide positive personal development and support for the area’s thousands of vulnerable youth. Unable to find an organisation that provided this critical support, he began his own community-based project in 2004, called the LEAD Youth Club (LEAD:Leaders Endeavouring for Adolescents’ Development). LEAD’s focus is to tackle a variety of social problems through peer education. The organisation hosts and participates in several workshops which are aimed to get inner city youth educated to a level where they can be employed.

Individual Winner: Sunitha Krishnan(India)has been physically assaulted 14 times and receives regular death threats. This because of her work as an activist and  co-founder of Prajwala, an organisation that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates victims of sex-trafficking  back into society. Sunitha’s creation of Prajwala dates back to 1996 after a red light area in Hyderabad was evacuated and thousands of women, who were caught in the clutches of prostitution, were left homeless. Through education, rehabilitation, and job training, she helps to restore hope and dignity to victims of sex slavery.

Organisational Winner: Project Pink Blue(Nigeria)a youth-led community-based cancer initiative that has been providing breast and cervical cancer free screening for poor and rural women in Nigeria, amidst many obstacles, including the perception that cancer is “white people’s disease”.Since its founding,Project PINK BLUE has been able to impact the lives of many people by providing cancer education, awareness for living healthier lifestyles, preventive measures, distributing breast self-examination guides, and health education across generations. Since September 2013, over 600 women have been treated and millions have been reached through their work and they have helped poor cancer patients pay for treatments they could not otherwise afford.