Posted on June 27, 2012

Rockefeller Foundation Announces Winners of 2012 Innovation Challenges

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced the winners of its 2012 Innovation Challenges, a competition designed to surface solutions to pressing global challenges such as access to fresh water, food insecurity, and rapid urbanization.

Based on results from the foundation's 2011 Innovation Forum, the competition invited people and organizations around the globe to submit innovative ideas related to one of three topics: how to use data to improve the quality of life for poor or vulnerable communities; how to improve or scale agricultural water use efficiency; and how to encourage and support young people to enter and stay in farming. Selected from nearly two thousand entries, the eight winners will be eligible for grants of $100,000 each to develop their ideas further.

The winners of the 2012 Innovation Challenges include Mali's Mobido Coulibaly, who came up with the idea for FarmQuest, a reality radio program featuring six to eight young people who compete over a nine- to twelve-month period to create the best new farm; Amos Winter of the United States, who submitted a product idea for a novel drip emitter that promises to reduce the cost of one-acre drip irrigation systems by 90 percent, putting them within the reach of small-scale subsistence farmers without access to electricity; and Brazilian Pedro Markun, who submitted an idea for a data platform that helps Sao Paulo residents get official information regarding their neighborhoods and topics of interest in a timely fashion.

"The selection of our Innovation Challenge winners is the culmination of a year-long process of gathering global leaders, identifying key pressing issues, and challenging the world to develop innovative solutions to these issues," said Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin. "I am thrilled with the overwhelming response we received to the challenges and am excited to see our eight winners put their ideas into action."