awards

The Tech Awards, a signature program of The Tech Museum, honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to address humanity’s most urgent challenges.

This is a great opportunity for social innovators in tech and invention, for funding and for recognition.  Last year, Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Joseph Adelegan won the cash prize in his category for his "Cows to Kilowats" program, and Fellows Howard Weinstein and Bright Simons were named Laureates for their work creating the Solar Ear and mPedigree, respectively.

"GOOD and Babelgum ask artists, inventors, and thinkers one simple question: If there weren’t any pesky practical limitations, what world-changing device would you invent? See their answers in [their] Big Ideas video series...You have until August 26 to submit your video. GOOD will select and notify the winner on September 2, 2009. The winner’s video will be released on good.is/bigideas and bablegum.com on September 23, 2009."

We have several Ashoka Fellows who focus on toilets as a way of bringing social change. Today we want to congratulate the two Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows Jack Sim and David Kuria who won the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepeneur of the Year 2009 for Asia and Africa respectively.

They both work on improving sanitation by changing the way communities see toilets.

David's organization, IKO Toilets, has achieved this by transforming run-down toilet stations in Kenya into mini shopping malls where customers can even get their shoes shined. David offers customers the ability to pay for using these toilets through mobile phone technology.

While Jack, through World Toilet Organization (WTO), is revamping the field of sanitation worldwide by bringing technical, financial, organizational, and market-related strategies to citizen organizations working on sanitation (for all of you inventors out there: while you are visiting his website make sure to check out WTO's timeline of toilet inventors).