Whitley Award winner Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka has received further international recognition after her NGO, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), was named as winner of the Global Development Network’s (GDN) 2012 Japanese Award for the Most Innovative Development Project for their work scaling up their Whitley Award winning Village Health Conservation work and for their Village Savings and Loan Associations initiative.
The award was won at GDN’s 14th Annual Global Development Conference on ‘Inequality, Social protection and Inclusive Growth’ held at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines on 19-21 June 2013 where about 400 participants attended the conference from all over the world including South East Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. This is the first time a Ugandan organization has ever won this award and CTPH was among three finalists together with organizations from India and Bangladesh. The Award is supported by the Ministry of Finance, Government of Japan.
Gladys explains, “Winning the 2012 Japanese Most Innovative Development Project Award has been one of the most significant achievements since we founded Conservation Through Public Health in 2003. It has made me confident that our model for sustainable service delivery is sufficiently tried and tested for scaling up to other communities in Uganda and around the world. As we mark a decade of integrating biodiversity conservation, health and community development, this award has come at the right time to enable us to expand the social and environmental impact. We look forward to the funding and mentorship from the Global Development Network (GDN) community”.