Scipione Sangiovanni, the third prize at the 55 International Piano Competition Maria Canals de Barcelona won the second prize at the 26th Concurso Internacional de Musica da Cidade do Porto 2010.

The GNRC Africa initiated ethics education radio program- Focus on Peace, that has been running since last year in Kenya and Somaliland found its way to Kampala Uganda on the 16th July 2010. The program content combines themes from the UNICEF and UNESCO approved ethics education tool book Learning to Live Together, children’s voices regarding peace- moderated by prominent religious leaders in the region.

Radio programs have been proposed as the appropriate outlet for youth voices on peace throughout East and the Horn of Africa. The long-term goals of this initiative are to have a strong youth network for peace in Uganda and indeed the entire East and Horn of Africa, with the capacity to generate and maintain discourse on themes related to peace and peace building. Other objectives of the program include to sustain peace and education for peace, as a poverty reduction strategy at the grassroots, to enhance the capacity of children and young people to affectively communicate through the mass media-specially radio, to plant the seeds for peaceful co-existence among children and young people from diverse background and to raise the profile of children/youth as a category and peace as a value within public discourse.

The peace education program in Kampala will be aired by the Voice of Africa (VOA) Radio. The VOA radio- Uganda is proud of its wide listenership transmitting on 92.3FM in the central region, 102.7FM in Masaka region, 90.6FM western region and 100.2 FM eastern regions of Uganda. This combined listenership totals to over 0.5 million people in Uganda. VOA is owned by the Union of Muslim Councils for East, Central and Southern Africa (UMC) which also owns voice of Africa Rwanda and has partnered with Radio Islam of Mozambique, IQRA FM of Kenya and 789 of Cape Town.
To complement the radio program, rechargeable radios were donated to the VOA radio station by GNRC staff. The radios will be distributed to families, peace clubs in schools and youth as gifts to encourage listenership of the Focus on Peace radio program and other ethics education information.

Speaking at the UMC offices where the radios were donated Sheikh Haroon Sengooba the secretary general of UMC thanked GNRC Africa for the radios and its efforts to encourage peace via the ethics education program. Also present at the ceremony was Mr Ntege Ismail the general manager of VOA and Ms Faridah Nakawooya the secretary for women affairs.

SNV in Colombia presents a new "Guíde on Best Practices to Implement Inclusive Businesses in the Palm Oil Sector" (in Spanish).

This publication is based on an evaluation conducted during 2009 by SNV-CECODES, Fedepalma and the USAID/ MIDAS Programme where 22 cases of productive partnerships were analysed in all regions producing  palm oil. These partnerships involve more than 20 extractive companies, 90 producers' organisations and 3900 families of small producers of palm oil. 

The evaluation revealed the strengths and weaknesses of these partnerships and also showed their performance in production aspects, environment, social impact, commercial activities, organisational capacities, as well as institutional, administrative and financial aspects. 

The Guide also uses the experience and procedures used by the Project called "Support to Productive Partnerships" carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development of Colombia. This publication was financed by USAID. 

For more information please contact María Clara Rodriguez, Advisor, SNV in Colombia: mrodriguez@snvworld.org

SNV is one of the six international prize winners at the prestigious Ashden Awards ceremony in London today. More than 150 project contributions were sent in for these awards.

SNV Vietnam was rewarded for its innovation in tackling the twin problem of dangerous cooking practices and untreated animal waste. In partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, SNV launched a programme to convert the waste into energy via biogas digesters. The digesters provide clean, reliable energy for cooking and heating. They also reduce the health and environmental hazards associated with wood fuels, not to mention, the animal waste. Since 2003, over 80,000 systems have been installed, benefitting more than 400,000 people, with CO2 savings of around 167,000 tonnes per year.

The Vietnamese biogas programme is one of the seven domestic biogas programmes SNV supports in Asia. Since 1992, this resulted in 300,000 constructed biogas plants, improving the quality of life of 1.8 million people.

Articles and photo from: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/snv-netherlands-development-organisation/news/article/2010/07/snv-among-ashden-awards-prize-winners