Twelve winners of the sixth cycle of the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment (DIABP) on Wednesday gave brief presentations of their award winning projects at a ceremony held at Dubai Municipality.
Award winners from India, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Rwanda, Palestine, Philippines, Peru, Spain, Vietnam Cameroon, Brazil and New Zealand were present on the occasion.
Ms. Wandia Seaforth, Acting Chief of Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme, UN HABITAT gave the speech on behalf of the UN in the presentation ceremony of the award winners. Dr. Engineer Rassem J. Badran, a member of the award jury talked about the jury experience while Mr. Vincent Kitio, Best Practices Officer at the UN HABITAT introduced the winners.
Ms. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Mr. Nicholas You, Chief of Best Practices and Policies Unit at HABITAT and Mr. Obeid Salem Al Shamsi, Assistant Director General of Dubai Municipality for Administrative and General Services Affairs and Member of the DIABP Board of Trustees also attended the presentation ceremony.
The presentation ceremony started with a presentation of the award winning project from India. I P Gautam, Municipal Commissioner of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state of India and Amit Shah, Mayor of Ahmedabad city talked about their project, "Mainstreaming Urban Poor."
Gautam said more than a million people were benefited from the project, which aims to upgrade 120 slums and the project has already succeeded in upgrading 47 slums.
Other Best Practices Award winners who presented their projects include "Green Brigade" cleaning, Ougadougou, Burkina Faso; Village of Hope - addressing HIV/AIDS, women's right to shelter, culture of peace, Rwanda; Job Creation Through Restoration of Historic Centres of Palestine; Urban Management and Participative Governance: Neiva's Commune, Colombia; Talisay Rivers for Environmental and Economic Sustainability Project, Philippines; Sustainable Solid Waste Management Program in the city of Carhuaz and the School of Planning and Environmental Municipal Management, Peru; Parla's Citizen's Forum, Spain; Saving a wetland, Hatien, Habitats, Handbags, Vietnam; and Addressing problem of street children, Saint Nicodeme, Cameroon. In the Best Practice Transfers category, which was introduced during this cycle of DIABP, Youth Citizenship Network, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Grassroots Women International Academy, New Zealand presented their winning projects.
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© Press Release 2007
