MUMBAI: BBC World will produce six 30-minute programmes on each nominee of the The World Challenge - a global competition seeking to highlight and reward outstanding examples of community enterprise and innovation. The programme will examine how the initiative began, its inspiration and why it is socially and environmentally successful.
For The World Challenge competition in 2006, BBC World and Newsweek, the weekly global current affairs magazine, have joined with Shell to search for, highlight and reward individuals or groups that have used enterprise and innovation to the benefit of local communities.
In an official statement issued, the six programmes will feature two finalists per programme and will be broadcast to BBC World's weekly global audience of 65 million viewers in October and November 2006. The channel's viewers will be invited to vote online for the most commendable and inspirational project. Full details are available online at http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk.
Newsweek will mirror the programmes' content in a six-part series of advertorials on the 12 nominees, aimed at driving its readers to the online voting site. The campaign will reach 1.5 million weekly readers across Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The World Challenge has attracted more than 800 nominations, nearly double the amount received last year.
Nominations for the 2006 competition closed on 7 June and a total of 816 nominations were received - a 79 per cent increase on last year's nominations of 457. This year's competition attracted the greatest numbers from India (159), Philippines (56), Nigeria (47), USA (34), Kenya (32), South Africa (32), England (20) and Uganda (20), states an official release.
A panel of expert judges will now shortlist the nominations to 12 finalists that show the best examples of community-based business, development or environmental projects. The finalists will then be announced at the beginning of July.
During The World Challenge in 2005, more than 120,000 votes were cast from around the world. The winning project, Coconets from the Philippines, was presented with a US$20,000 grant from Shell, which has been invested in further developing their system to prevent landslides using waste coconut husks.
Once voting has closed, the winner of World Challenge 2006 will be announced at an awards ceremony in The Hague in December 2006. The winner will again receive a US$20,000 grant from Shell to invest in their project, plus the two runners-up will each receive US$10,000.
