$40,000 Awarded to Business as Mission Companies
Cards from Africa, led by Chris Page has followed up their second place finish in the World Challenge (Read related article about the world challenge) by winning first place in the Open for Business competition at Urbana06.The British born missionary teamed up with Rwandan artists several years ago to start the Cards from Africa. In short, the organization employs Rwandan orphans to make stationary from recycled office paper. The orphans are paid more than what they would have made otherwise and are exposed to the gospel through daily devotionals.
As winners of the competition, Cards from Africa receives a $25,000 grant. This comes weeks after receiving a $10,000 grant while finishing second in the World Challenge competition sponsored by Newsweek, BBC, and Shell.
The second place award of $10,000 was awarded to a business plan for the agricultural training of Southeast Asian farmers. The 3rd place prize of $5,000 was awarded to Ladder Works, a temp agency in Thailand led by David Von Stroh.
Jimmy Quach, one of the co-leaders of the Open for Business event, was very impressed by the response to the competition and suggested that it might continue in the future, "Given the high-level of interest, we are definitely considering repeating this competition in the future, but have made no commitments yet. Because this is the first triple-bottom-line competition we do want to take the opportunity to learn from this first round."
Labels: Awards and Competitions, Events and Conferences, Urbana06
