The Peer Water Exchange from India is Top in the Digital World

Winners of World Summit Award announced

Peer Water Exchange from India wins prize for world’s best e-Science & Technology product

Bangalore/Hongkong/Salzburg
June 18th, 2011

Multi-channel and multi-device content for savvy citizens and creative use of biometric, wireless and conventional services are the hallmarks of the stellar products which are announced as this year’s winners of the UN based World Summit Award (WSA).

The Peer Water Exchange was declared WSA winner in the e-Science & Technology thus making it to the group of outstanding best-practise developments.

As part of the UN activities following the World Summit on the Information society, the WSA recognizes the outstanding achievements of content designers and application producers in eight categories. It started in 2003 and will continue until the UN review in 2015.

“All those winning the WSA, from Colombia to India and from Ghana to Lithuania, can be proud as they have shown that great digital contents are produced all over the world and as they have won against over 460 other competitors for this price,” states Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck, Chairman of the World Summit Award Board of Directors.

Currently, one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.7 billion people lack access to a toilet. Based in Bangalore, Peer Water Exchange, or PWX, has created an innovative and efficient model, bringing together all stakeholders in the water sector--funders, service providers, project implementers and beneficiaries--to more effectively address today's water and sanitation crisis. Specifically, PWX's web-based multimedia exchange platform and central clearinghouse enables stakeholders from around the world to collaborate on the reviewing, funding, managing and tracking the impact of community-based water and sanitation projects. The only scalable, map-driven, and transparent platform in the water sector, PWX is the first truly participatory decision-making system in development work, allowing stakeholders to weigh in on funding decisions and generate shared data.

“PWX has shown that it is possible to scale and replicate community-based WASH projects around the world – this is hugely important when one of the major barriers to community – to – community learning has been cost and distance. PWX nurtures WASH leaders, creates knowledge and serves society across the globe. That's adding value indeed,” states Isha Ray, Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley. PWX combines people, process, and technology to help make a sustainable dent in the global water crisis. Winning WSA will help grow PWX’s footprint and bring more community based WASH projects into the exchange, therefore further enhancing shared knowledge and expanding our vision to bring safe drinking water and hygienic, dignified sanitation to all. Winners will present their outstanding products and projects, network with business partners and meet other experts in the field of ICT at the WSA 2011 Winners Events in Egypt, later this year.

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Europe hosts the most of the world’s best in e-Content and Creativity - 18 winning projects. China, India, New Zealand and Singapore won 2 awards each by producing superior websites, content rich apps or creative digital content. Egypt, famous for its new media revolution, takes home one World Summit Award.

The Winners were decided on by a prestigious Grand Jury in Hong Kong. Jury members come from all continents and have backgrounds in the creative industries, telecommunication, advertising, journalism and research, as well as in teaching.

They evaluated the over 460 submissions from 105 countries on the basis of content and creativity. Each UN Member State can only nominate one product per category to the World Summit Award and thus, a lot of countries organise national pre-selection awards prior to the international jury.

About the WSA

The World Summit Award (WSA), was started as an initiative by the Republic of Austria as a contribution to the United Nations World Summit on Information Society(WSIS) and is organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg. It partners with UN organisations and agencies in the implementation of the Geneva Agenda and the Tunis Action Plan and selects and promotes the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications; to date more than 160 countries are actively involved. Through national pre-selections and contests and a global jury process, WSA demonstrates the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use. WSA is a global hub for everyone who values the crucial importance of local content to make today’s information society more inclusive.

For further information, go to the WSA website or contact WSA.

About Peer Water Exchange

The Peer Water Exchange, a Bangalore based non-profit, is a pioneering effort to enforce collaboration marshaling resources cost-effectively to make decisions efficiently and transparently. A peer-run participatory decision-making system, PWX has proven that crowdsourcing the expertise in the field is extremely valuable and can be used within a robust network to scale up the management of thousands of diverse, customized grassroots water and sanitation projects. In addition, PWX is a cost-effective approach to monitor and measure the long-term impact of small projects to ensure that we are truly making a dent in the global water crisis.

For further information, go to the PWX website or email PWX.