September is near and with it our annual Jury Meeting. For us at the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, this is the most exciting time of the year, to be crowned by the announcement of our 2008 Right Livelihood Award Laureates on October 1.

The Jury Meeting - Hard decisions ahead

Our board member Paul Ekins, and Ole von Uexkull, the Foundation's Executive Director, have just completed the research on this year's candidates.

Ole says: "Though not all proposed projects are potential recipients, we always have a lot of very good candidates to choose from. Each year, it is a tough decision for our Jury to make. We invest about 25,000 EUR (about 38,900 USD) into the thorough research of candidates every year, and I go personally and visit the most interesting ones. This is important, so that we can guarantee the credibility of the projects we select."

This year, there are 91 individuals and organisations from 42 countries on our candidate list. Over the last months, Ole has visited several projects in different countries, among them Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brasil, the USA, and Switzerland.

In September, the Right Livelihood Award Jury will convene in Salzburg, Austria. Its composition varies from year to year. For a list of all jury members who have served over the years, see www.rightlivelihood.org/jury.html

  Learn more about the selection process on our website

Spotlight: Food Crisis

Global food crisis - who hasn't seen it covering the headlines of major newspapers and broadcasters worldwide? Food production, fair trade, and what democracy has to do with it - the topic has been on our Laureates' agendas for a long time.

The following links to our Laureate pages will provide you with critical insights into biofuels and World Bank politics, but also with proposals on how we can overcome the crisis and its underlying reasons.

 Walden Bello: How to manufacture a global food crisis: Lessons from the World Bank.

 Vandana Shiva: The recipe for food rights.

 Pat Mooney: Biofuels fuel global food crisis.

And last, but not least: Frances Moore-Lappé, who has worked for more than 30 years with the political and economic causes of world hunger and how to remedy them.
 

Right Livelihood Award Statistics

How old are the Right Livelihood Award Laureates when they receive the Prize? How many women has the Foundation honoured? And where do the Laureates come from?

In the context of her master thesis in sociology, our intern Sarah Wohlfeld has developed statistics about the Right Livelihood Award Laureates from 1980-2007. She also compared the figures of the Right Livelihood Awards to those of the Nobel Prizes.

 See the statistics on our website

Center Party Donation

In June, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation received a donation of one million Swedish Crowns (about USD 167,000) from the Swedish Center Party.

Maud Olofsson, leader of the Center Party, said: “The Right Livelihood Award Foundation highlights people all around the world who quietly work for a more humane society. This is an effort that we would like to encourage and contribute to.”

The Right Livelihood Award Foundation sincerely thanks the Center Party for this generous support.

 

Thank you very much for your interest!

Kind regards from the Right Livelihood Award Foundation

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD FOUNDATION
PO Box 15072, 104 65 Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: +46 8 70 20 339, Fax: +46 8 70 20 338

PS: If you want to join us in supporting projects of hope, please read the
 donations section on our website.