Reed Elsevier has declared the launch of ‘the Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge’ inviting entries of novel concepts to assure an improved level of sanitation and safe water for implementing in communities where access to such facilities poses a danger.
To facilitate the applicants to prepare their entries and join the competition, the Reed Elsevier will allow access to its related products such as the journal of the International Water Association and Water Research. The first place will receive a prize money of $50,000 and the second place will get a prize money of $25,000.
The submissions are expected to concentrate on projects that can improve the reach to safe water and better available sanitation facilities in places where such facilities are not available. The suggested projects need to be easily replicable in other places, modifiable and capable of being sustained. They must have realistic usage and highly standardized for improvement and should provide non-discriminatory and fair access to every one since it involves a number of stakeholders and it should have local and community level participation. The winning entries will be given importance in Water Reach.
The Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge lends support to the UN General Assembly-established Water for Life Decade project which is set to run between 2005 and 2015. The project is set to patronize the Millennium Development Goal to bring down the number of people who experience difficulty in getting safe drinking water and to prevent misuse of available water resources. A recent release from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that approximately 900 million people all over the world do not have the privilege of safe drinking water and another 2.6 billion people suffer from poor sanitation facilities and these two leads to violent conflicts and health crises in a number of developing countries.
According to Youngsuk (Y.S) Chi, head of government affairs for Reed Elsevier and chairman of the Elsevier Management Committee, the Environmental Challenge attracts attention to a grave problem, which is access to water faced all over the world. The company is uniquely placed to utilize its expertise in environmental publishing and its extensive network to assist exchange and spread of information to better the reach to secure and sustainable water.
Source: http://www.reedelsevier.com/