Do you have a clean cooking solution? Apply for an Ashden Award!
Nearly 3 billion people rely on open fires and inefficient stoves and fuels to cook their food, causing widespread health problems, air pollution, and environmental degradation. This large-scale challenge calls for large-scale solutions. In response, the Alliance and Ashden have teamed up to offer a special award to organizations working to accelerate the uptake of clean cooking solutions. These solutions could include products or services that improve the affordability and financially-viable distribution channels of clean cookstoves and fuels, and/or efforts that demonstrate successful approaches to women’s empowerment, user-centered design, and long-term behavior change.
Winners of the prestigious Ashden Award will receive £20,000, as well opportunities to present their work to large and influential audiences at the Ashden Awards Ceremony and elsewhere. In addition, winners will gain access to the Ashden alumni network, and the possibility of further support in the form of professional mentoring, training, help raising finance and investment, and media and communications assistance.
Any organization doing relevant work (and meeting’s Ashden’s general criteria) is welcome to apply, including businesses, NGOs, government organizations, and social enterprises (both for-profit and not-for profit, including community groups). However, priority will be given to applicants whose solutions meet the Alliance’s performance guidelines for ‘clean’ and ‘efficient’ based on the ISO International Workshop Agreement (IWA) of 2012.
The work must be delivered in at least one of the UN’s developing regions of Africa, Caribbean, Central America, South America, Asia (excluding Japan) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), and can be in rural or urban areas. High-income countries in these regions, as defined by the World Bank, are not eligible to apply. See here for a list of eligible countries.
Applications for the Ashden Awards must be submitted by 11:59 pm GMT on 06 November 2018. Winners will be announced in June of 2019.
Find out more here.