BOS Founder Willie Smits - Finalist in BBC World Challenge

[Guest guest]

BOS Founder Willie Smits - Finalist in BBC World Challenge (Programme airs

today, 21st October, on BBC World-schedule can be found at

http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/Schedules.aspx?)

 

World Challenge 2007 is a competition aimed at finding individuals or groups

who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level.

 

 

This global competition seeks out projects and businesses that not only make

a profit, but also put something back into the community. The competition is all

about rewarding individuals or groups that truly make a difference through

enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level.

 

The programmes will feature the twelve finalists whose innovative projects or

ideas are benefiting communities socially, environmentally or financially.

 

Viewers will have the chance to vote online and pick the winner who will be

featured on a special programme from the Awards ceremony shown on December 8th.

The winner will receive a US$20,000 award to benefit their project, while two

runners-up will each receive $10,000.

 

To vote for Dr Smits’s project, please go to

http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/voteform.php and click on Steaming Ahead.

 

About the project:

Steaming Ahead - Extracting the sugar from sugar palm requires a

good deal of heat. For the farmers of Tomohon, a mountainous region of

Indonesia, timber was the obvious source. Seeing the damage being done to his

beloved rainforest, conservation expert Dr Willie Smits hooked the palm farmers

up with a local geothermal power project. He established a factory that uses

waste steam from the power plant to heat the sugar palm sap. The resulting

high-quality product is now being successfully exported – with all profits going

direct to the farmers’ cooperative. Some 6285 poor farmers and their families

are now benefiting from the project, and around 200,000 square metres of forest

have been preserved. Dr Smits believes his business model could serve throughout

Indonesia as a sustainable alternative to the destructive Palm Oil trade.

 

Note from the Director of BOS UK: If you care about orangutans, this project

offers a solution that can not only impact the lives of orangutans but countless

other species that depend upon the rainforest, including humans. Alternatives to

the currently unsustainable production of palm oil are essential to saving the

forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, the only places where orangutans live in the

wild. Please vote.

(Apologies for cross-postings)

 

 

Michelle Desilets, Director

Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK

www.savetheorangutan.org.uk

" Primates Helping Primates "

 

NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: info

 

 

For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit For Good this month.