Over the last thirty years The Rolex Awards for Enterprise have honoured scores of special individuals, men and women whose energy and creativity have been responsible for initiating extraordinary projects.
These projects have expanded human knowledge or improved life on our planet. Some have created innovative technologies to help remote communities, many have helped protect endangered animal life and the earth's delicate ecosystems. Others have preserved a part of our human heritage that might have disappeared forever.
These people are of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds but they have one thing in common, a Spirit of Enterprise that has enabled them to realise their dream. This programme tells the stories of those who were awarded in 2006.
In south-eastern Siberia, a nomadic people are trying to preserve their way of life against the march of modern society. The traditional culture of the Evenk, who excel at reindeer herding, hunting and fishing had eroded through contact with Western civilization. For eight years, Alexandra Lavrillier, a brilliant French ethnologist, has been fighting alongside them to save their heritage, setting up a nomadic school that will give Evenk children the chance to receive modern education without having to sacrifice their ancestral traditions.
Impelled by the love of the sea and its largest fish, the elusive whale shark, marine conservationist brad Norman has created a photo-identification system to assist its conservation. Based on a pattern-recognition method originally invented to study constellations in the night sky, the system will soon enable scores of coastal communities and thousands of individual divers to gather information about this gentle giant of the seas. The images they provide will help scientists understand its mysterious way of life and protect this charismatic species.
After rediscovering a species of hornbill thought to be extinct in the Thailand's ravaged rainforests, microbiologist Pilai Poonswad set about turning former poachers and illegal loggers into protectors of these glorious birds and their precarious habitat. her 1997 plan for city families to "adopt" hornbill nests to fund the work has brought about remarkable changes in community attitudes towards conservation. For her unstinting dedication to hornbills worldwide, particularly in southern Thailand, Professor Poonswad is today revered as the "Great Mother of the Hornbills".
In a remote part of India, one woman has established a movement to revive a local form of artistic expression, hand embroidery, creating a sustainable means of income. The region of Kutch once had a long and rich tradition of embroidery which made a welcome contrast to the region's austere landscape. But from the 1960s onwards, synthetic material and machine work pushed this craft close to extinction. Acutely aware of its cultural, social and spiritual value, Chanda Shroff is preserving this unique heritage while promoting and exquisite art form and empowering women in highly conservative societies.
English Zoologist Rory Wilson is renowned for developing ingenious ways to track wild animals and record their behaviour without directly observing them. His latest invention, a lightweight electronic logger, can go where satellite-based tracking devices cannot, to observe free-living animals. Wilson's logger harnesses the laws of physics to accurately estimate the energy expenditure of animals on land, at sea and in the air, and is set to revolutionize research into the behaviour of threatened species, and obtain precious data to help save them and their habitats.
Loading...
8:38
Pioneering Individuals: Rolex Award Winners 2006 Part 1 of 6by TVEAPfilms780 views
Link to this comment:
All Comments (0)