Tech Awards 2009 - Al Gore Awarded the Global Humanitarian Award

Like last year, my husband and I attended the Tech Awards Gala at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center last night. For the last nine years, fifteen Tech Awards Laureates were recognized for “profoundly improving the human condition through the use of technology”.

Each year I am amazed and inspired by the passion, creativity, and spirit of innovation each winner possesses. I am particularly impressed that the award criteria is based on the impact the technology has in improving the human condition rather than the technology itself. The technology does not need to be leading edge technology to have measurable benefit. Sometimes it is very simple or even ancient. I recall a retired couple from Menlo Park, CA who won The Tech Award years ago for building pulley-based bridges across rivers or ravines to give access to schools or medical facilities in rural areas of the world.

Photo: Globalgiving.com

These Nepalese school girls do not have to use a dangerous, makeshift trapeze contraption to go to school any longer. By the way, if you are looking for a terrific humanitarian gift for this coming holiday season, a mere $15 will buy a chaka (wheel) for this bridge. Requests for more bridges like these are overwhelming. Click here to donate.

Mike Splinter, Chairman and CEO of Applied Materials, presented Former Vice President Al Gore with the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award for his contribution in raising global awareness of climate change.

In his acceptance speech, Gore spoke of his college professor who over forty years ago foretold the imminent sequence of events that would result in the Earth’s climate change. Over the years, as he saw the professor’s predictions unfold, he was inspired him to take action from the first time he was elected to public office.

Gore told the 1,500 attendees of the plight of the people in Bangladesh who are direct victims of the rising sea level. The Bangladeshis used to have to rebuild their lives because of flooding every twenty years. Now, they have to rebuild every 3-9 years.

He acknowledged that it is difficult to relate how the rapidly melting ice and snow in the Himalayas might affect us. But when he said that the seven great rivers of Asia, like the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers, all originate from the ice and snow of the Himalayas, it became very clear.

Australian firefighters are fighting fires that are hotter than they’ve ever experienced before. In a moment of epiphany, they realized that the best way to fight fires is to be on the forefront of affecting public policy to stop global warming.

Gore closed by saying that “we have everything we need to solve the problem with the possible exception of political will. Fortunately political will is a renewable resource.”

Next post, I will tell you about the Award Laureates.

Tech Awards 2008 - The Laureates

After Muhammad Yunus delivered the keynote speech at the Tech Awards 2008, this year’s laureates were presented their awards in five categories.

Intel Environment Award


The guests of honor at our table were the charming husband-and-wife team Georg and Ulrike Gruber, of Vereinigte Werkstätten für Pflanzenöltechnologie (say that three times quickly!). They developed the technology to modify diesel engines so that they can run on pure plant oil and a green process for extracting plant oil. Plant oil extraction requires significantly less energy than extracting fossil fuels and the by-products are converted into high-protein food and straw which is used for mulch.

Please excuse the glass of red wine. I'm not sure what the proper wine pairing for Camelina Oil Cakes would be, but I can tell you first hand that it paired quite nicely with our dinner.

We all admired beautiful trophy the Gruber's brought back to the table. I realized for the first time that the globe stands on a silicon ingot base.

Learn how silicon ingots are grown to make computer chips here.

The winner in this category was the Cheetah Conservation Fund. They use technology to convert invasive thorn bushes into a clean fuel. In Namibia, 25 million acres of land are choked with this bush. It renders the land useless for agriculture, alters the water cycle, reduces soil fertility, and begins desertification. The uprooted bushes are processed by a biomass processing plant produces a clean fuel, replacing firewood and coal, while restoring Namibia’s vanishing ecosystems.

The organization also cares for orphaned, old or injured cheetahs that cannot be released back into the wild. It costs $5000 a year to care for each cheetah. Looking for a great Christmas gift? You can choose which cheetah to sponsor:

Sandy is available for sponsorship.

Accenture Economic Development Award

Many of India’s rural villages suffer because they are caught in a cycle of extreme poverty. Lack of electricity cannot support income-generating businesses and lack of income cannot bring electricity. DESI Power won this award because it brings affordable biomass gasification power plants to these villages.

The power plant creates many local jobs and improves a village's economic standing, but what I am most impressed with is its impact on girls and women. Bringing reliable, safe, and clean power and drinking water frees them from being forced to collect and process fuel and water and it saves them from being exposed to toxic fumes. As a result, they can now use the services of Desi Power’s Management Training Centre for Rural Women.



Microsoft Education Award

Digital StudyHall deploys school lessons on DVD’s because there is a shortage of qualified teachers in rural and slum schools in India. The DVD’s contain lessons that help both the teachers and kids from the schools. So far they have created more than 1,000 recordings of lessons given by high-quality instructors in English, math, and science, in Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and English.

A donation to Digital StudyHall will help fund local “foot soldiers” to deliver the DVD's and equipment purchases.
Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award

Close to a million homes collapsed in earthquakes in the last three years. Build Change trains builders and homeowners to build earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries. Their designs are affordable, sustainable, easy to build and use locally-available skills and materials. They also ensure that they are culturally appropriate and resemble the traditional homes of the region.

When the tsunami devastated Aceh, BuildChange built 33 houses and aided in improving the design and construction of 4,200 homes. A resident gratefully exclaimed: “Now I can sleep at night”.

You can make a donation to BuildChange here.

Fogarty Institute for Innovation Health Award

The technology of the final award saved an estimated 3 million lives. Marc Koska of Star Syringe, Ltd developed a disposable syringe that is impossible to reuse. More than a billion K1 syringes have prevented cross-infection of Hepatitis B and C and HIV across the world. The design is simple, openly licensed to manufacturers, and kept at the same cost as standard syringes.

It was a great evening – a true celebration of the human spirit.

Photos - cheetah: http://www.cheetah.org/, DESI Power rural women: http://www.desipower.com/, Digital StudyHall: dsh.cs.washington.edu, BuildChange: www.buildchange.org/, Star Syringe: http://www.starsyringe.com/

Tech Awards 2008 - Muhammad Yunus

Wednesday night, my husband and I had the great privilege of attending the Tech Awards Gala along with 1,500 other Silicon Valley dwellers. This is the fourth time I’ve attended the gala and, as always, it was an immensely inspiring evening. What I like about the awards is the spirit behind them. There are oodles of awards and rewards in the industry recognizing pure technical innovation, but these awards honor those who use technology to benefit humanity.

Muhammad Yunus

The first award, The James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award, presented by Mike Splinter of Applied Materials, was given to Muhammad Yunus, the father of micro lending and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Splinter speaks of this award as a “reminder of all things going right”. Yunus’ efforts to focus on those who are marginalized and excluded, while being sensitive local customs, are partly responsible for making the world flat.

Yunus’ acceptance speech was stirring. He is not just a doer, but a visionary. He speaks of his belief that “all human beings are gifted with unlimited human potential”. His desire is to see the need for a poverty museum so that when a child asks what poverty is parents would have to take the child to a poverty museum because it does not exist anywhere in the world.

He knew his audience too. He spoke of the world that is coming next: “Silicon Valley is the midwife of what will be created in the next 20 years”, making many in attendance sit a little taller.

His intentions are clearly golden when he said that his effort was created “out of desperation” to help those in need. He told stories to exemplify that “poverty is not created by poor people; rather it is created by the system.” He described how micro lending can cause a ripple effect of social change and help improve lives with dignity. A sixteen dollar micro loan to the owner of a donut business, allowed him to build a home and send his children to school, thus breaking the cycle of poverty in his lineage. A $300 house loan allows one to build a home with a safe, tin roof rather than a thatch or leaf roof. He received a knowing chuckle throughout the audience when he said that the world now realizes that the poor are better credit risks then the rich.

Yunus’ efforts do not stop at micro lending. Bangladeshi children used to suffer from the disease nyctalopia, commonly known as night-blindness. Yunus learned that the disease is due to Vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A can be delivered either through vegetables or tablets. Yunus chose to not go down the tablet path because he felt that once people are given tablets, they will forever be dependent on them. Instead, he helped facilitate the efforts to sell vegetable seeds in penny packets. Fortunately Bangladesh soil is very fertile and night-blindness is now history there.

Yunus likes to push the envelope in the realm of expectations. He worked with Danone to create yoghurt that delivers micronutrients missing in the diet of the children in Bangladesh. Danone quickly agreed to the project and the fantastic news is that they learned that children’s nutrients can be replenished within 9-10 months.

Once Danone agreed to develop the yoghurt, Yunus further insisted that Danone ought to make this a social business. He explained that after Danone recouped their investment costs, the remaining profits should be reinvested to reach more poor people. In other words, the business ought to be driven by a social objective.

Next, he insisted on using only biodegradable containers. Danone once again agreed with Yunus and found corn-based containers that are biodegradable. Still not satisfied, he asked: “Will the containers be eaten?” No, of course they will not be eaten. With a gleam in his eyes Yunus said: “I like to eat ice cream cones.” I’m sure you are not surprised to learn that Danone is currently working on edible containers.



That’s all for today, next time I will tell you about some of this year’s Tech Award Laureates.





Photos: Tech Awards - techaward.org, Muhammed Yunus - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/2678921063/, Danone yoghurt in Bangladesh - http://www.flickr.com/photos/danone-communities/1544322186/