We are very proud to share with you that RIDS-Nepal participated in "The StopPoverty conference 2010" event held in Switzerland and we made second prize at the contest. Here are a couple of pictures from the event.

The Swiss NGO "StopArmut2015" (StopPoverty2015, http://www.stoparmut2015.ch/home/) awards every year projects and individuals that dedicate themselves to fighting global poverty. This year's winners were announced at the annual StopPoverty conference on October 9 in Bern.

The goal of the conference was to raise the public awareness that only five years remain to reach the eight anti-poverty goals the UN have put forth in 2000. Ambassador Martin Dahinden, director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (http://www.deza.admin.ch/en/Home), set the stage with an encouraging speech. Prof. Thomas Schirrmacher, chairman of the theological board of the World Evangelic Alliance (http://www.worldevangelicals.org/) followed, explaining the term integral mission - fighting poverty as an integral part of the churches' commitment to God and humankind. He further emphasized that both governments and NGOs should keep up their efforts in international development cooperation, since they can complement each other.

For lunch, the organizer had devised a visual aid for global injustice. Whereas many participants got only a little milk and water, a few lucky ones were served a three-course meal. The name of the game was world banquet. After the more or less opulent lunch, workshops were held on the technical aspects of fighting poverty, and, to conclude the conference, the winners of this year's StopPoverty contest were announced. Two thirds of the prize money of 30.000 Swiss Francs were awarded to the biogas plant of the Mount-Tabor-Mission in Lesotho. The prize money for the second place was split equally among a project in Nepal for smokeless metal stoves (submitted by RIDS-Nepal  http://www.rids-nepal.org and the Green Fish http://gruenerfisch.ch/informationen.php), a project in Ethiopia revolving around low-CO2 bricks (submitted by SELAM and the Green Fish) and a reforestation project in Burkina Faso (submitted by Association Jéthro). The total amount of 30000 SF was donated by the committee of the national Swiss Christ Day event and corresponds to a 100% CO2-compensation of that event.

After all said and done, the fight against global poverty continues. For the people involved in the winning projects, it does so with a small financial aid.