Brazil's MDGs Award recognized 20 innovative initiatives led by municipalities and civil society organizations.
UNDP Administrator Helen Clark highlighted that Rio+20 can be inspired by the achievement of so many communities and countries.
1 June 2012: Brazil’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Award recognized 20 innovative initiatives led by municipalities and civil society organizations aimed at improving lives of the country’s most disadvantaged communities.
Helen Clark, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator, and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s President, launched the fourth edition of the prize. Clark noted that the prize can stimulate innovation and establish new partnerships, and highlighted that the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) can be inspired by the achievements of communities and countries.
Rousseff said the Award reaffirms the need to combat social exclusion and build a country without poverty, and noted that Brazil’s advances in achieving the MDGs have been supported by more than 5,000 registered projects since the MDG Award’s first edition.
Awardee initiatives include empowering women in one of Rio de Janeiro’s poorest communities, and helping low-income communities improve sustainable practices of Brazil nut extraction in the savannah, previously a site of deforestation. [UNDP Press Release, 30 May 2012] [UNDP Press Release, 1 June 2012]