Commonwealth Innovation Awards 2021 Winners

Marie-Claire Nabila Kuja is a nurse turned social entrepreneur and the innovator of KujaEcoPads which is Cameroon’s first 100% biodegradable sanitary napkins made from banana stem fibers. KujaEcoPads has empowered more than 30000 girls in Cameroon to stay in school during their monthly period and created more than a hundred jobs for low-income women who are involved in the entire value chain.

Marie-Claire is a menstrual hygiene activist, a sanitary pad campaigner and a women and girls empowerment champion with a great passion for good health and wellness for all women and girls. Her vision for KujaEcoPads is to have the product as a household name not only in Cameroon and all over Africa and the rest of the world.

KujaEcoPads website

Q&A

What does winning the Commonwealth Innovation Award mean to you/your organisation?

“It is fantastic to win one of the world’s most prestigious awards. I couldn’t believe it. I was proud to be on the shortlist but didn’t know I’ll win. It still feels like a dream. This is one of the highlights of my life. Winning this award has energized me to do more, to continue to reach for the stars, and to set my eyes on my next big goal while believing in my dreams always.”

How would you use being the recipient of this award to influence others and how would it impact your career?

“This award will boost the morale of my employees and improve motivation. When you receive a prestigious award, everyone on your team feels better. They appreciate being recognized for their hard work. This award will increase our visibility and help to boost the company profile. It will open pathways for partnerships at a global level and bring new connections and networking opportunities.”

Arwa’s background in Biochemistry propelled his interest into bio-ethanol fuel manufacturing. It began as a classroom experiment and transformed into a business centred on providing low income households with affordable clean cooking energy by converting invasive water hyacinth into ethanol fuel.

While ethanol is traditionally made by adding yeast to products like sorghum, barley and sugar cane, CIST Ethanol Fuel uses water hyacinth, an invasive plant found in abundance in Lake Victoria. Unlike other materials used to produce ethanol, water hyacinth contains strong cellulose bonds. Arwa manufactured an enzyme which breaks these bonds through fermentation, which takes place once the hyacinth has been cleaned and shredded. Laboratory tests found that CIST Ethanol has a low sulphur content and releases minimal emissions when burnt, making it safe for cooking.

Kenyans living in rural areas and informal settlements mostly use firewood, kerosene and wick stoves to cook, all of which are costly, pose fire hazards, and have severe health and environmental implications. CIST Ethanol is nearly 40% cheaper than kerosene, and sold to entrepreneurs in refugee camps, where they resell it to make an income. Arwa has built his own equipment to separate and distil the ethanol after finding that commercially available equipment, which produces 2,000 litres of ethanol per day, is unaffordable. He plans to manufacture and sell the equipment to other small businesses.

Cist Ethanol Fuel website

Q&A

What are your plans or what do you hope to achieve with your innovation in the next few years?

“We plan to increase bio-ethanol production to 3000 litres per day which is enough to supply 9000 households with clean cooking energy and 10 schools with alcohol based hand sanitisers. We plan to install 20 Automatic Ethanol fuel dispenser machines in low income communities which is expected to reduce the cost of ethanol fuel by 50% by eliminating the cost of packaging and branding. We also plan to market 9000 single burner ethanol cook stoves.”

What kind of support would you like to grow your innovation from other stakeholders such government, international organisations and the business community?

“We need financial support to purchase machinery to upscale bio-ethanol fuel production and to purchase and market dispenser machines and ethanol cook-stoves. We need technical support to leverage Cloud and IoT technology and provide CIST bio-ethanol fuel using a dense network of cloud connected ethanol Automatic Dispenser Machines. These will primarily be used as automatic ethanol fuel dispenser machines as well as digital media machines with video and radio for advertisement purposes.”

Samar has pioneered the use of truck art to address social issues in Pakistan. Billboard on wheels with messages and images drawn from local culture and traditions are helping change mindsets and promote the empowerment of girls and women in remote parts of Pakistan.

The trucks travel across and reach remote areas of Pakistan, serving as moving billboards. She integrates culture and indigenous folk art, film and folk music to create culturally relevant interventions that resonate with local audiences. Through these innovative tools of storytelling, she has raised awareness about harmful cultural practices, including compensation marriages.

Samar created her first documentary on the practice of ‘Swara,’ a form of compensation child marriage, in order to raise awareness and ultimately mobilise policymakers to abolish this practice. She filed the first Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the compensation marriages and illegal Jirga rulings, which made Swara officially illegal in Pakistan in 2004. This has prevented the potential compensation marriages of thousands of girls in Pakistan.

Ethnomedia website

Q&A

What are your plans or what do you hope to achieve with your innovation in the next few years?

“I want to continue using innovative tools for spreading awareness and changing mindsets.  Art has the power to connect people and educate audiences in an innovative way. Raising awareness is the first step to start localising SDGs. If done in collaboration with the local communities the message and the information will be owned by the audiences that matter. In future I would like to continue creating innovative, culturally relevant work that is  local, relevant and sustainable.”

What kind of support would you like to grow your innovation from other stakeholders such government, international organisations and the business community?

“I would like international organisations, business community, government and other stakeholders to understand the relevance of campaigns that are local and indigenous. Truck art is a tool that is easily acceptable and valued by the local communities. Not only that, they are the co-creators of the campaign. It is mostly men, the drivers of the vehicles, the owners of trucks, truck artists etc. who become the real advocates and change makers. Instead of replicating ideas from other parts of the world why not explore local and indigenous tools and ideas for a bigger impact.”

Green Connect is a not-for-profit social enterprise in Wollongong, Australia that employs young people and former refugees to do environmental work, including an 11 acre urban permaculture farm focussed on zero waste services and growing fair food

Green Connect tackles three challenges: refugee and youth unemployment, an unsustainable food system and too much waste going to landfill. Wollongong has a big refugee population, and only 31% of refugees have a job 5 years after resettlement and youth unemployment is as high as 36%. Green Connect focuses on creating more jobs for former refugees and young people. Young people and former refugees deliver a weekly box of fresh, seasonal fruit, vegetables and herbs to local communities. Green Connect’s business model focusses on less waste, and fair food – good for those who eat it, those who grow it, and the planet.

Green Connect website

Q&A

What do you/your organisation hope to achieve after your success in the Innovation Awards?

“We hope that people are inspired by this project and that it will be replicated in other parts of the world, because it shows that it is possible to bring about social change and environmental regeneration while running a business. This is social enterprise. It’s the best of business and charity brought together to solve the biggest issues our communities face.”

What are the biggest challenges you are facing to nurture and expand your innovation and its impact?

“The biggest challenge is the perverse incentives currently in place through large subsidies for synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and into employment services that have been proven not to help vulnerable people. If those subsidies were shifted to organic growing and to subsidise employment-generating social enterprises instead, we would see vast improvements to human health, the environment, jobs for people who need them most, and improved community wellbeing. Interestingly, both represent better value for money for government than the status quo.”