The BBC World Service Trust has won a number of prestigious awards during 2008. "Innovation of the Year" at the BBC World Service Awards, and Sony Gold are among the highlights so far, and reflect the strength and creativity of the work we are doing around the world. Details of all the awards are listed below.
"God's own crop" a film about a seed bank managed by a group of women in India won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) 2008 Award for Programmes on Development Issues. It was produced by the Doordashan team in India, trained by the BBC World Service Trust through the iLearn Focus on Environment project.
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The BBC World Service Trust was named "Best Media Agency" by the International Leprosy Union for its work on leprosy between 1999 and 2001.
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The online ZigZag project in Iran was named Innovation of the Year at the BBC World Service Awards in March 2008. The project was recognised for the way in which it had used the website and distance iLearn courses in Farsi to provide encouragement and support to journalists in place of more traditional approaches to training.
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The team from "Bangladesh Sanglap" - a groundbreaking series of Question Time-style debates - were awarded the "One BBC" prize for collaboration on the "Nodipathey Bangladesh" (Bangladesh by River) project along with the BBC World Service Asia Pacific Region and English Networks News.
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The Bangladesh by River project won the Gold multiplatform radio award at the prestigious annual Sony Awards in May 2008. The Sony judging panel praised the project, saying:
"This is not about budgets but about creativity and using the plethora of multimedia options now available to generate something unique and uniquely valuable. This is absolutely the paradigm for an interactive radio project in the current landscape and is by far the deserved winner."
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The BBC World Service Trust received the Core Competence Award for Business Excellence from the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC), for its work in increasing awareness about HIV and AIDS. The prize was awarded for popular and innovative multi-media HIV and AIDS awareness campaigns in India.
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The Afghan Education Projects (AEP) children's department was awarded a Silver Medal at the prestigious New York Festival Radio Broadcasting Awards in June 2008. The Silver Medal was awarded for one of the Our World Our Future children's programmes on hygiene. "Harmful Guests" tells the story of two dirty germs, Chaki and Maki, who try to make their way to a human stomach. The programme provides young listeners with useful tips about how to prevent them from succeeding.
Shirazuddin Siddiqi, BBC World Service Trust Country Director for Afghanistan said: "This is a celebration and recognition of all the efforts AEP put in to produce needs-based imaginative programming. The achievement is a clear indication of the progress made."
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" Under the Sign of the Earth", a Romanian documentary produced as part of a BBC World Service Trust programme on social integration won a prestigious television award at the annual SIMFEST festival of local and independent TV in Romania. The winning film focuses on a community of Lipovans - a Russian minority - in Targu Frumos, a small town in north east Romania, and was judged best documentary about an ethnic community.
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SKG Sangha, a renewable energy company in India won a Tech Museum Award for their work in empowering women in rural India through biogas and composting technologies. The BBC World Service Trust trained members of SKG Sangha as part of the India environment project.
