The Intercultural Innovation Award | 2011 winners

The “BMW Group Award for Intercultural Innovation in support of the Alliance of Civilizations under the auspices of the United Nations” (The Intercultural Innovation Award) was bestowed upon ten initiatives from around the world at the 4th Annual Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) on December 12.

Jorge Sampaio, High Representative for the UNAOC, and Konstanze Carreras, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at the BMW Group, hosted the gala function for The Intercultural Innovation Award. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated the winners as well during the Forum.

This award represents a new kind of partnership between the private sector and the UN system, aiming to select highly innovative projects that promote dialogue and inter-cultural understanding and to make a vital contribution to safety and peace in societies around the world.

More than 400 proposals from 70 countries were considered for the award. They included projects from emerging countries such as China and Brazil as well as others, such as one from South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, and another from the Solomon Islands, the world’s smallest country. The award-winning projects cover a wide range of areas, including the role of youth and women in promoting intercultural understanding, immigration, integration, and the use of social media in fostering the collaboration among people from different parts of the world.

The third prize went to the pan-European project CafeBabel.com, with its “Europe on the Ground” initiative, an intercultural journalism project. Cafebabel is a project initiated in France and is the first European current affairs magazine designed for readers across borders, published in 6 languages: French, English, German, Italian Spanish and Polish.

In the ARTS category, finalists from Asia and Europe included: