It is with great pleasure that we announce the recipients of the 2013 Nelson Mandela – Graça Machel Innovation Awards.
This year, the Innovation Awards are providing seed funding of US$3,000 to local dialogues between civil society and other sectors usually not connected. The dialogues follow the theme of the 2012 CIVICUS World Assembly, “a new social contract”, and the programmatic track “Building partnerships for social innovation”. In 2013, only CIVICUS members who participated at the 2012 World Assembly were invited to submit proposals.
An international panel of civil society experts selected five winning dialogues:
- “Stakeholders forum on building citizen engagement and participation in the Niger Delta”, by the Niger Delta Women's movement for Peace and Development, in Nigeria;
- “No more time out from Poverty”, by Living In a Shanty Town (L.I.S.T) in Kenya;
- A new social contract session during the Post-2015 Development Agenda on Population and Youth Employment Conference, organised by Cape Verde Youth Federation, Organization of African Youth, Network of Former United Nations Volunteers in Africa, in Cape Verde;
- "Enhancing religious pluralism and tolerance in humanitarian organisations”, organised by Action For Fundamental Change and Development (AFFCAD), in Uganda; and
- “Responsabilidad social: una apuesta por el aprendizaje cruzado”, organised by Centro Ecuatoriano de Derecho Ambiental, in Ecuador.
The proposals were selected for their novelty and originality, sustainability, potential for positive impact on citizen rights and justice, and partnership opportunities.
This awards scheme is part of the Civic Space Initiative, which aims to protect and expand civic space by fostering an enabling legal environment for civil society organisations around the world. The project is implemented in partnership with the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), Article 19, and the World Movement for Democracy, with support from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida).
The five supported projects will now use the award money to organise the local multistakeholder dialogues in their countries before the end of June. For example, in Kenya, the objective of the consultation is to connect beneficiaries of poverty alleviation programs, donor agencies and government representatives in charge of the youth empowerment programme so as to create a shift in their relations towards the empowerment of the beneficiaries as “authors of their own destinies”. “I am excited and humbled by the award”, says Pauline Wanja, the Kenyan recipient.
One of the three 2012 CIVICUS Nelson Mandela - Graça Machel Innovation Awards was awarded to Action Communautaire de Solidarité et d’Intervention Sociale (ACSIS) in Haiti to organise a forum on issues of governance and accountability, to initiating a discussion between civil society, local communities and the local authorities in the town of Croix-des-Bouquets, north of the capital Port Au Prince. The forum was held on Wednesday 23 January 2013 and Lucien Dossous, director of ACSIS, answers questions from CIVICUS on the forum (in French).