The world's best and most imaginative schemes - prizes announced
How many members of the public internationally know that they can win
Awards and a thousand UK pounds (US$1,600) simply by sending in their
bright ideas for social improvements to the *Global Ideas Bank* - by e-mail
or even on a postcard? The 1996 Social Innovation Awards have just been
announced this month - for the winners see the Web on
http://www.newciv.org/GIB/
The Global Ideas Bank, a non-profit charity whose patrons include the
musician Brian Eno, the businesswoman Anita Roddick and the novelist Fay
Weldon, vets the ideas sent in, and the 3,000 best ideas and projects are
featured online, covering every subject under the sun, from birth to death,
via education, sex, housing, money, taxation, economics, business, welfare,
crime, health, neighbourhood, environment, science, transport,
communications, computers, arts, the developing world, war, politics and
spirituality.
The *Web Social Innovations Award* for 1996, for instance, goes to the
Alternative Institutions e-mail list whose theme is "alternative ways to
run conversations, countries, households, markets, offices, romances,
schools". Amongst the other winning awards are: a scheme teaching babies to
sing (with one-year-olds vocalising "in perfect pitch and rhythm"), a
proposal that prisoners earn money to pay their victims and an idea for
Green Miles (like Frequent Flyer and Airmiles, but for public transport
only).
150,000 people a year access the Global Ideas Bank at present and they can
rate each idea from 0 to 10. "Inevitably", says Nicholas Albery, chairman
of the Institute for Social Inventions in London, which edits the Global
Ideas Bank, "this being the Internet, the most popular ideas in our top 40
list are the weird ones. Currently, these concern polyfidelity group
marriage, lost pet ads in California predicting earthquakes and a ring
tattoo to discourage adultery."
The Death and Dying section of the Global Ideas Bank, managed by the
London-based Natural Death Centre, also gives Awards each September. This
year's main award goes to the designer of a Celebration Box to be used at
the back of funeral services in crematoria and church (for collecting the
congregation's mementoes and words about the person who has died). Also
winning awards are a research paper on the art and science of fasting to
death (in India and elsewhere) and a self-published book by Lois Hjelmstad
in Colorado on finding joy within the crevices of cancer and fear.
For further information, please contact Nicholas Albery at the locations below.
-- With best wishes, Nicholas Albery <rhino@dial.pipex.com> The Institute for Social Inventions | Tel +44 [0]181 208 2853 *also* The Natural Death Centre | Fax +44 [0]181 452 6434 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA, UK ISI/Global Ideas Bank is at http://newciv.org/GIB/ NDC/Funerals info: http://newciv.org/worldtrans/naturaldeath.html
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