The ONE Africa Award celebrates and bolsters innovative Africa-led, Africa-driven advocacy efforts to help advance one or more of the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s blueprint to fighting extreme poverty and disease. The goals specifically address critical issues to development, such as; halving extreme poverty; halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria and providing universal primary education.

GF2D helps women in exercising their right to participate in decision making processes of their country.

One of GF2D’s tools is the use of paralegals who are trained in Togolese laws by GF2D and empowered to communicate messages to communities about women’s rights, engage in mediations related to marriage, inheritance and children, and offer referral assistance for issues that need to be handled in court. Many of their paralegals are everyday women – traders, seamstresses, mothers, whose lives have been changed because of their paralegal training and some of them have gone on to seek local political positions. These women and men have become well-respected members of their societies because of their knowledge of Togolese laws and their ability to convey the rights of women to their peers in simple messages. GF2D has been integral to the increase in the number of female political office holders in Togo today.

As winners of this year’s ONE Africa Award GF2D receive $100000 in prize money.

As the award was announcement here in Johansburg, Léontine, GF2D’s General Secretary said:

“We dedicate the 2011 ONE Award to all Togolese women whose bravery and dynamism are well known. We want to recognize the silent majority of those who suffer from violence, discrimination and low incomes gained from their hard efforts. The announcement of the award was greeted with a great joy at the “House of women” by all the members and staff of GF2D.

This award represents the recognition for over 20 years of efforts to realize a vision where: women know their rights and fully benefit from them:

• Togolese women, freed from the constraints and socio-cultural burdens imosed on them, contribute to the development of their society
• equal participation of men and women exists in the political, social and economic decision making processes
• a genuine partnership exists between men and women in the management of their families, public and private institutions

We receive this award as an encouragement to persevere in defending the cause of women. We thank ONE whose mission is to recognize, reward and support the important work of African civil society organizations towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). “

The runners up of the award this year in no particular order include: Prévention Information et Lutte contre le Sida (PILS) – Mauritius, Africa Youth Trust (AYT) – Kenya, Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) – Ghana and Sylva Food Solutions Limited (SFSL) – Zambia

Previous award winners include Nigeria’s Development Communications Network (Devcoms) and Kenya’s Slums Information Development and Resources Centres (SIDAREC) and SEND West Africa.

We are here today to celebrate Africa’s unsung heroes and to play our part on changing the stereotype narrative on Africa. We don’t deny that there are challenges that exist, but, we also need to highlight the successes, the determination and the ingenuous creativity of the African people despite these challenges.

I’m sure you will join me in congratulating GF2D and our runners ups, and thanking them for the amazing work they are doing across the continent. We wish them every success in the future!

Throughout Africa, there is amazing progress by civil society focused on ending extreme poverty and fostering socio-economic empowerment. These new ideas and exciting approaches are designed and implemented by Africans who understand the complexities of bringing about change and transforming lives in their communities. The ONE Africa Award applauds the progress of these unsung heroes and organizations and looks forward to solutions for the challenges ahead.

This year’s award will recognize the Africa-driven, Africa-led advocacy efforts that have demonstrated success at a community, national or regional level.

When applications closed in September, we had received more than 150 applications, which have been reduced down to the following five finalists:

Prévention Information Lutte contre le Sida

Groupe de réflexion et d’action Femme, Démocratie et Développement

Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights

Sylva Food Solutions

Africa Youth Trust

The 2011 ONE Africa Award winner will be announced tomorrow, December 14 and you can watch the announcement live here on ONE.org.

The event will be broadcast at 17:00 South Africa time (16:00 CET, 15:00 GMT/UTC, 10:00 EST, 07:00 PST).

Watch the ceremony here (Windows Media Format):

Or if you are using a Mac click here to watch the webcast in QuickTime format.

By honoring the commitment and progress on the ground, we hope new efforts can be inspired.

We wish all the finalists good luck!

Follow the Twitter conversation during the webcast tomorrow by following @ONEinAfrica and using the hashtag #AfricaAward.

Nicolas Ritter

Mauritius is probably not one of the African countries you would list in counting the likely candidates dealing with an HIV/AIDS problem, especially if your association of the country mirrors mine of beach, sun and palm trees! And yet PILS is an organization that has made great strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS by focusing on the parts of the population most affected by the disease and ensuring that their exclusion from care and prevention did not facilitate an epidemic in the country.

PILS was started by Nicolas Ritter in 1996 two years after he found out he was HIV-positive. At the time there were no services in Mauritius for individuals with HIV/AIDS, and he had to fly to neighboring Reunion Island to get treatment. Inspired by what was happening in this neighboring country, he decided to start PILS at the age of 25. At the time, there were only about 140 cases of the disease in the country, but without treatment it was pretty much a death sentence. By 2001, the number of known HIV-positive cases had doubled to over 280 and Nicolas decided to be the first person to publicly declare his status. With a change of government in 2000, their advocacy efforts intensified and they were able to convince the new government to open the National Aids Centre. As a result of the strong advocacy by PILS, the government agreed to provide universal access to ARVs.

In this same period, Mauritius had become a hub for heroine trafficking and the drug had hit the streets. In 2003, an explosion of HIV cases among drug users occurred and by 2005, there were over 2,000 cases in the country. In the same year, Mauritius was identified as the country with the highest opiate consumption in Africa (relative to population size) and the second highest in the world after Iran. Today, 75 percent of HIV cases in Mauritius are among needle users.

To address these issues, PILS organized the first conference in Africa on opiates abuse and harm reduction, and has successfully drawn attention to the emerging issue of drug use in Africa and the consequent epidemic problems. Once AIDS is introduced in the drug user community it spreads fast. But thanks to PILS advocacy there has been a reduction of the rate of infection amongst injectable drug users. The organization recognizes that the groups most affected by this disease in Mauritius — commercial sex workers, men having sex with other men, and injectable drug users -– could be stuck in a vicious cycle of vulnerability if they not supported.

PILS has lobbied for amendments to the drug act, which criminalized paraphernalia associated with drugs including needles, and prevented interventions such as a needle exchange program that could help address the problem. When the hard-fought-for HIV/AIDS Bill was introduced in 2006, it contained harmful provisions such as the criminalization of HIV transmission, but PILS was ready to mobilize and through its advocacy efforts and successfully had these provisions removed and replaced with language to protect HIV-positive cases.

PILS has also created economic empowerment programs to support HIV-positive individuals and the support groups that they convene encourage platforms for people to share their fears, hopes and dreams.

The PILS team

PILS has been instrumental in the introduction of important HIV/AIDS in Mauritius and has also ensured the amendment of legislation that could contribute to the worsening of the HIV situation on the small island. While there were many instances in the early days of their advocacy work that PILS had to go into direct opposition with the government’s position on HIV-related matters, they now have a great working relationship and are a key partner of government in the fight against the disease.

PILS work has saved lives and that’s what keeps Nicolas and his team dedicated to their work. They know that HIV/AIDS doesn’t have to be a death sentence and more and more, the people of Mauritius know this too.

A big WELL DONE to PILS for all their hard work and we wish you the very best of luck!

The 2011 ONE Africa Award finalists continue with the announcement of our third finalist, a model for social entrepreneurship in the agriculture sector. If you are already familiar with ONE’s recent activities then you will know that we recently launched our campaign to address the famine in the Horn of Africa. Hunger and malnutrition continue to be important issues on the continent and that’s why the work that our next finalist, Sylva Food Solutions (SFS), is doing is so important.

Sylvia Banda, the founder of SFS, is a very well known personality in Zambia and speaks regularly on the most popular private radio station in the country, Radio Phoenix, about the importance of using local foods, nutrition, and maintaining a healthy life style. With 10 employees, Sylvia started SFS in 2005 building on her successful catering business that had been around for about 25 years.

Sylvia Banda and members of her team

The idea for SFS came to Sylvia after observing the deterioration in the quality of the kinds of food being eaten in Zambia. Much of the food lacked nutritional content and she quickly noticed the opportunity for promoting the use of vegetables in the Zambian diet. Sylvia embarked on an effort to work with farmers and train them to preserve vegetables hygienically with the guarantee that she would purchase them, thereby guaranteeing a market for these goods. These vegetables, the leaves from staple crops like pumpkins and sweet potatoes, were previously discarded by the farmers but are now a new potential source of income.

Sylva Foods seeks to provide an efficient and viable avenue for rural smallholder farmers to market their indigenous farm produce to both local and export markets. The organization promotes improved quality of farm yields by training farmers to add value and focus on hygiene in the harvesting of their produce. In the last 6 years, Sylva Foods has trained over 8,500 smallholder rural farmers in Zambia, which has enabled them to scale up their production capacity and engage directly with the markets. They have also engaged in marketing and lobbying efforts to promote the consumption of indigenous foods, including working with the Zambian First Lady to participate in a national television program promoting the consumption of indigenous food. SFS also organized “Cook of the Year” competitions and involved hotels, schools and the general public to spread the message about the nutritional value of traditional foods.

Sylva Foods works with rural smallholder farmers

SFS has also impacted the consumer culture around Zambian vegetables and raised demand by advocating for a return to the traditional foods that Zambians used to eat before the global culture of fast food started impacting their diet. SFS invested profits from the catering business into the initial interventions including the cooking competitions. As they have built success, the government and donors have become involved and they have been able to access additional funding to scale up their work. The Zambian Development Agency has also featured SFS in many regional and international trade expositions leading to the development of agreements between SFS and other countries to supply their markets with indigenous Zambian food.

Sylvia Banda continues to develop her idea of transforming the agriculture sector to provide improved nutritional benefit and economic empowerment of Zambians. Her next endeavour is a catering college where she hopes that she will train the next generation of Zambian cooks who will be familiar with the nutritional value of local foods and able to respond to the increasing demand that she has helped to foster in her country.

Congratulations to Sylvia Food Solutions for all your hard work and for making it to the finals of the 2011 ONE Africa Award. We wish you the very best of luck.

Reading about Africa in the Western news media can often be a depression-inducing experience. Conflicts, corruption, coups, famine and disease are just a few of the ills singled out in the everyday news coverage of the African continent in Europe and North America. We at ONE are working hard to change that narrative, though. Not by denying the major challenges that certainly exist on my home continent, but by highlighting the successes, the determination and the ingenuous creativity of the African people despite these challenges. There is no good reason why Africa’s positive stories of the major progress that are happening everyday should not be told and be overshadowed disproportionately by short-term, isolated challenges.

Africa is rising and the Africa of today is a continent of great optimism and greater consciousness of the need to chart its own destiny. It is a continent of much more empowered citizens when it comes to demanding more accountability from their leaders as well as participating in shaping their own communities and their countries. These are the stories that must be told and we at ONE are finding such examples everyday and making an effort to bring you this other narrative about Africa by sharing the positive story/ies of a rising Africa.

One aspect of that story is the rise of a vocal and vibrant civil society in Africa. A civil society that has been effective in contributing to public participation, clamored for more transparent and accountable governance; lobbied for women and children’s rights to be understood and respected, and demanded better basic public services. Indeed African civil society has been an integral part of the real change that has swept over the continent in the last decade. These great stories must be brought to the fore. Though the dynamism of the civil society varies depending in which country you are, there’s an unmistakable increase in the activities and influence of non-governmental organizations—even notwithstanding the multitude of challenges civil society organizations face in much of Africa. From lack of funding, to hostile governments and restrictions on speech (to just name a few), it can be incredibly tricky if not risky to operate in some African countries, making their efforts and successes that much more heroic.

But challenges have never stopped progress and in Africa such obstacles have only strengthened determination. At ONE we’re proud to partner and work with many organizations across the continent. We often showcase the health education efforts and medical interventions by local clinics and medical groups to stop malaria transmission or treat HIV or prevent vaccine-preventable diseases. We work with farmers associations and other agricultural organizations to promote the best farming practices. We lend a helping hand to our fellow advocacy groups as they encourage their governments to root out corruption and open their national budgets and laws to public scrutiny and review. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for African citizens taking the initiative to make their communities better places to live and work.

We have also been privileged to feature some of these organizations over the past few years through offering the ONE Africa Award, a $100,000 USD prize devoted to recognizing the work of indigenous African organizations, individuals and groups in developing the continent specifically in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals. Last year’s recipient was SEND-Ghana, a policy, research and advocacy-based organization working to promote good governance and equality among men and women in Ghana. The group’s efforts have helped civil society to organize and influence policy and improve transparency through empowering citizens to monitor the government’s delivery of basic services.

We’ve found that offering this prize is our best way to shine a spotlight on some of the exceptional work being driven and led by Africans. Past years winners have come from Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana and the call for nominations for the next award is now open until September 16, 2011. If you know of any Africa-based organizations finding improbable solutions to vexing challenges, please encourage them to apply today.

“We are humbled by the decision of the United Nations to recognize 18 July as Nelson Mandela International Day. It is our wish that the day be used not to honor an individual, but rather to remember the millions who have contributed to the struggle for freedom throughout the world. The best way to commemorate these struggles is for people everywhere to work with and within communities to make this a better world.

Let us remember that freedom from poverty, hunger and disease, that access to quality education, are as much human rights challenges as political oppression. May Nelson Mandela International Day contribute to those challenges being met.”

We at ONE continue to be inspired by the vision of Mr. Mandela, and as the world celebrates his 93rd birthday this week, we are reminded to continue to extend ourselves in working towards his dream and vision for a better life for all.

It begins with each one of us giving a little bit. While Mr Mandela devoted 67 years to social and political activism, he only asks for 67 minutes of your day to make a difference in someone else’s life, spreading ubuntu, selflessness and love. Ubuntu is an African philosophy centered on the oneness of humanity, thus encouraging respect for diversity, promoting dignity, peace, good health and prosperity. It is therefore not limited to one day. Indeed, this year’s theme encourages us to, “Take Action, Inspire Change, Make Every Day a Mandela Day.”

At ONE we strive everyday for these same ideals, that is why — encouraged by Mr. Mandela — we push for change, call upon world leaders to keep their promises, fight to end the spread of preventable disease and campaign to make poverty history. We also realize that we are not alone in this journey. There are many acts of kindness, selflessness and activism that are fighting the same causes.

We strive as much as possible to find, promote and grow these ordinary silent heroes be they individuals or organizations as they step up to the responsibility of making our world a better place for all humanity. Some of these we are already trying to encourage and reward in our own small way through efforts like the ONE Award. These ordinary citizens, through their work, social spaces and communities, collectively or individually continue to challenge themselves everyday to do their part to make the world a better place. And in the spirit of Ubuntu, we at ONE seek to work together with others in trying to build a better world.

In the words of Mr. Mandela, “And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

Happy Birthday and thank you Mr. Mandela!

This year the ONE Africa Award will particularly address two things; creativity and advocacy. We shall be rewarding innovative Africa-led, Africa-driven advocacy efforts to help advance one or more of the Millennium Development Goals. The winner receives $100, 000 USD.

Since crowning our first winner in 2008, we continue to see evidence of selfless African efforts in utilizing unique methods designed to reduce poverty and the spread of preventable diseases. These organizations demonstrate that they understand the complexities of working with their communities and hence provide the best solutions to combat their problems, and drive the demand for change that is necessary for the continent to transform and attain any of the Millennium Development Goals.

Our first winner in 2008 was Devcoms for its work with the media in Nigeria, training and educating journalists and editors on public healthcare issues. Devcoms’ work, corresponded with a substantial rise in media coverage of maternal and child health issues in Nigeria, bringing much needed attention to the challenges and awareness of how they can be addressed. In 2009, SIDAREC, a community organization founded by young people in Nairobi’s slums, won for its work in engaging and empowering disadvantaged youth in the urban slums of Kenya’s capital and actively preventing violence. Last year, SEND West Africa won for their work to educate and empower citizens to take part in the political process and access the services available to them. SEND’s model of citizen engagement, education, training and advocacy is backed up by policy research and they not only promote sustainable development, but also ensure that their efforts can be replicated in different regions and countries.

You could be this year’s winner. Nominations for the award have already begun and close on September 16^th, 2011. Don’t waste another minute. For more details on how and where to send your applications, visit our website at: one.org/africaaward

The award recipient will be announced in December 2011.

SEND-Ghana is a policy research and advocacy-based NGO that works to promote good governance and equality for men and women in Ghana. Their main goal is to build society’s ability to organize, influence policy, improve transparency and access social services. And they play an important role in coordinating Ghana’s MDGs and monitoring improvements on them.

ONE Africa Award 2010 from ONE Campaign on Vimeo.

The ONE Africa Award seeks to highlight the dynamism and achievements of African individuals and civil society organizations who are building a better future for their communities, countries and continent. Past winners include Slums Information Development and Resources Centres and Development Communications Network. Each winner receives up to $100,000 to help continue the fight against poverty in Africa.

Congratulations, SEND-Ghana, and we thank you for all the work you do. You are living proof that new ideas and approaches are transforming lives in Africa one day at a time. Learn more about SEND-Ghana on their website.

And don’t forget to read about the runners up and honorable mentions on the ONE Africa Awards page.

Since becoming the first ONE Africa award recipient in 2008, Development Communications has continued their boot-camp style training for journalists on maternal and child health issues. They have forged partnerships with other organizations working to ensure that maternal and child health issues remain at the top of the Nigerian development agenda.

Our 2009 ONE award recipient, SIDAREC, was founded by a group of young people from the slums who have worked hard to uplift the standard of living of the youth living in Kenya’s slum communities by tapping into their skills and talents. The ONE Award has allowed SIDAREC to support some of their most underfunded programs including their radio station, Ghetto FM, and their Early Childhood Development (ECD) and HIV/AIDS support programs. ONE Award funds have helped SIDAREC enroll more children at the ECD centers and has been instrumental in helping SIDAREC equip their Kibera Resource Centers.

Since the Award, SIDAREC has received numerous visitors all interested to know about their programs. Many colleges and universities are sending students to SIDAREC for internships. The award has enhanced SIDAREC’s credibility as an important resource in local and international youth projects and SIDAREC is considered an organization worth partnering with to support youth projects and reach the community members with messages of hope.

So spread the word! The ONE Africa award is a great opportunity to spotlight some of the exceptional work happening on the African continent. If you are eligible, or you know an organization that is, I encourage you to apply before the September 24th deadline.

Find out more on the ONE Africa Award web site.

This great video, compiled by Kimberly Cadena, I think does a great job of explaining the background of the ONE Africa Award, as well as SIDAREC and some of this year’s runners up. We’ll have more on this soon!