The Pendeba Society Wins Top Prize of Ford Green Awards 2011
In the ceremony of Ford Green Awards 2011 held in Beijing on December 2nd, The Pendeba Society was awarded with the top prize of Nature Conservation Pioneer Award for its Nature Conservation and Community Development Project and 200,000 yuan as the project fund. Mr. Tsering Norbu, Director of The Pendeba Society accepted the award on behalf of this project. Mr. Joe Hinrichs, President, Asia Pacific and Africa Ford Motor Company and Chairman and CEO, Ford Motor (China) Ltd., who described the Pendeba Project as respectful, awarded Tsering Norbu with the certificate and trophy. Along with The Pendeba Society, another 29 excellent individual environmentalists and civil environmental organizations were also awarded with Ford Green Awards prizes.
The Pendeba Project, through a variety of projects that promote ecological conservation, social welfare improvement and alternative livelihoods development in the Qomolangma National Nature Preserve, aims to ameliorate local communities’ living standards and the surrounding environment, which in return stimulates sustainable use of natural resources and creates rapport between human and the Nature in the region. The Ford Green Awards (Pioneer Award and Communication Award), launched on August 1st, has attracted around 120 applications from concerned individual environmentalists and civil society organizations across China. After several rounds of evaluation and assessment procedures including on-site surveys, telephone interviews and oral examination in house, the Committee of Ford Green Awards finally selected the awardees.
“Thank you for all your support for the Pendeba Project. We will continue our efforts on the project and make it better,” Tsering Norbu enthused in his acceptance speech that indicated the hard work of Pendeba staff in Tibet for more than twenty years. As a grassroots community-based organization from Tibet, we are very excited and proud for this award and it witnessed our growth and marked the achievements. As what Tsering Norbu mentioned, The Pendeba Society will spare no effort to continue our project and strive for a blue sky and pure land in QNNP. We will not let our supporters down.