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WASHINGTON (Sept. 9, 2009)—A “carbon neutral” airline in Costa Rica, a “voluntourism” program in rural Cambodia supporting local education, and a free community-mapping Web site in Spain have taken top honors in the second Geotourism Challenge, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ashoka’s Changemakers.
The winners practice and advance the growing trend of geotourism: tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. They were selected from 10 finalists out of 611 original entries from 81 countries. Entries for “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place” almost doubled over the first Geotourism Challenge in 2008.
All three cutting-edge, innovative winners provide visitors with the opportunity to participate in sustainable travel; each winner will receive a $5,000 prize:
- Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. To date, Nature Air has compensated for nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through the protection of more than 500 acres. In addition, Nature Air recently helped develop Costa Rica’s first alternative fueling station through its wholly owned fueling company, Aerotica. Nature Air fuels all ground equipment and vehicles with bio-diesel (a mix of recycled vegetable and cooking oils) collected from employees and restaurants.
- PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units. All participants make donations to enhance education in impoverished rural Cambodia, where PEPY is based. It supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12 villages and six schools in rural Siem Reap Province, about 40 miles (65 km) from the city of Siem Reap, site of the Angkor temples.
- Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on information — including maps, photos and video — submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations. Wikiloc is a great source of outdoor activities, from mountain biking to ballooning. The site also promotes thematic activities like gastronomic routes, sightseeing urban trails and walks in archaeological areas. Created in 2006, the site is already translated in 14 languages, and more than 65,000 trails are included.
“We’re excited to support three new innovators stretching the possibilities of geotourism,” said Charlie Brown, Changemakers’ executive director. “These winners are pushing us closer to realizing and sustaining a kind of travel that will enrich cultures and environments across the globe.”
Jonathan B. Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, said, “The winners are outstanding examples of geotourism practices that extend to good destination stewardship. They are committed to conserving and enhancing the quality of their locales while benefiting local people and providing visitors with authentic experiences. Geotourism is no flash in the pan: Travelers around the globe are seeking it out in both rural and urban settings. We’re delighted to showcase the winners and runners-up who are leading the way.”
The seven Geotourism Challenge runners-up:
- Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through noncommercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people.
- Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much-respected public park and nature exploratory center.
- Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building.
- Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, United States, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects in each of the cities where it operates.
- RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips, Arunachal Pradesh, India, help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions.
- Trout Point Lodge, Nova Scotia, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.
- Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom, Rua Bom Jesus, Brazil, commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley.
For more details about the innovative work of all 10 finalists, go to the Geotourism Challenge 2009 website at www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge.
A panel of expert judges selected the 10 finalists in July, while the public chose the top three winners through online voting during a four-week period this summer, ending Aug. 12. The expert judges were Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement; Keith Bellows, a vice president of the National Geographic Society and editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine; Erika Harms, executive director of Sustainable Development, United Nations Foundation; Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet; Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted; and Dr. Yang Yuming, vice president of Southwest Forestry University, China.
About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding, and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building, and the sourcing of funding opportunities.
Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining, and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.
About National Geographic
The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 370 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the , visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.
For images of the three 2009 Geotourism Challenge winners, visit http://ftp.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/geotourism_challenge/
username: press
password: press
WASHINGTON (Sept. 9, 2009)—A “carbon neutral” airline in Costa Rica, a “voluntourism” program in rural Cambodia supporting local education, and a free community-mapping Web site in Spain have taken top honors in the second Geotourism Challenge, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ashoka’s Changemakers.
The winners practice and advance the growing trend of geotourism: tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. They were selected from 10 finalists out of 611 original entries from 81 countries. Entries for “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place” almost doubled over the first Geotourism Challenge in 2008.
All three cutting-edge, innovative winners provide visitors with the opportunity to participate in sustainable travel; each winner will receive a $5,000 prize:
- Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. To date, Nature Air has compensated for nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through the protection of more than 500 acres. In addition, Nature Air recently helped develop Costa Rica’s first alternative fueling station through its wholly owned fueling company, Aerotica. Nature Air fuels all ground equipment and vehicles with bio-diesel (a mix of recycled vegetable and cooking oils) collected from employees and restaurants.
- PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units. All participants make donations to enhance education in impoverished rural Cambodia, where PEPY is based. It supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12 villages and six schools in rural Siem Reap Province, about 40 miles (65 km) from the city of Siem Reap, site of the Angkor temples.
- Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on information — including maps, photos and video — submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations. Wikiloc is a great source of outdoor activities, from mountain biking to ballooning. The site also promotes thematic activities like gastronomic routes, sightseeing urban trails and walks in archaeological areas. Created in 2006, the site is already translated in 14 languages, and more than 65,000 trails are included.
“We’re excited to support three new innovators stretching the possibilities of geotourism,” said Charlie Brown, Changemakers’ executive director. “These winners are pushing us closer to realizing and sustaining a kind of travel that will enrich cultures and environments across the globe.”
Jonathan B. Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, said, “The winners are outstanding examples of geotourism practices that extend to good destination stewardship. They are committed to conserving and enhancing the quality of their locales while benefiting local people and providing visitors with authentic experiences. Geotourism is no flash in the pan: Travelers around the globe are seeking it out in both rural and urban settings. We’re delighted to showcase the winners and runners-up who are leading the way.”
The seven Geotourism Challenge runners-up:
- Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through noncommercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people.
- Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much-respected public park and nature exploratory center.
- Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building.
- Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, United States, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects in each of the cities where it operates.
- RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips, Arunachal Pradesh, India, help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions.
- Trout Point Lodge, Nova Scotia, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.
- Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom, Rua Bom Jesus, Brazil, commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley.
For more details about the innovative work of all 10 finalists, go to the Geotourism Challenge 2009 website at www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge.
A panel of expert judges selected the 10 finalists in July, while the public chose the top three winners through online voting during a four-week period this summer, ending Aug. 12. The expert judges were Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement; Keith Bellows, a vice president of the National Geographic Society and editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine; Erika Harms, executive director of Sustainable Development, United Nations Foundation; Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet; Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted; and Dr. Yang Yuming, vice president of Southwest Forestry University, China.
About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding, and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building, and the sourcing of funding opportunities.
Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining, and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.
About National Geographic
The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 370 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the , visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.
For images of the three 2009 Geotourism Challenge winners, visit http://ftp.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/geotourism_challenge/
username: press
password: press
WASHINGTON (Sept. 9, 2009)—A “carbon neutral” airline in Costa Rica, a “voluntourism” program in rural Cambodia supporting local education, and a free community-mapping Web site in Spain have taken top honors in the second Geotourism Challenge, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ashoka’s Changemakers.
The winners practice and advance the growing trend of geotourism: tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. They were selected from 10 finalists out of 611 original entries from 81 countries. Entries for “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place” almost doubled over the first Geotourism Challenge in 2008.
All three cutting-edge, innovative winners provide visitors with the opportunity to participate in sustainable travel; each winner will receive a $5,000 prize:
- Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. To date, Nature Air has compensated for nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through the protection of more than 500 acres. In addition, Nature Air recently helped develop Costa Rica’s first alternative fueling station through its wholly owned fueling company, Aerotica. Nature Air fuels all ground equipment and vehicles with bio-diesel (a mix of recycled vegetable and cooking oils) collected from employees and restaurants.
- PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units. All participants make donations to enhance education in impoverished rural Cambodia, where PEPY is based. It supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12 villages and six schools in rural Siem Reap Province, about 40 miles (65 km) from the city of Siem Reap, site of the Angkor temples.
- Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on information — including maps, photos and video — submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations. Wikiloc is a great source of outdoor activities, from mountain biking to ballooning. The site also promotes thematic activities like gastronomic routes, sightseeing urban trails and walks in archaeological areas. Created in 2006, the site is already translated in 14 languages, and more than 65,000 trails are included.
“We’re excited to support three new innovators stretching the possibilities of geotourism,” said Charlie Brown, Changemakers’ executive director. “These winners are pushing us closer to realizing and sustaining a kind of travel that will enrich cultures and environments across the globe.”
Jonathan B. Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, said, “The winners are outstanding examples of geotourism practices that extend to good destination stewardship. They are committed to conserving and enhancing the quality of their locales while benefiting local people and providing visitors with authentic experiences. Geotourism is no flash in the pan: Travelers around the globe are seeking it out in both rural and urban settings. We’re delighted to showcase the winners and runners-up who are leading the way.”
The seven Geotourism Challenge runners-up:
- Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through noncommercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people.
- Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much-respected public park and nature exploratory center.
- Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building.
- Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, United States, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects in each of the cities where it operates.
- RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips, Arunachal Pradesh, India, help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions.
- Trout Point Lodge, Nova Scotia, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.
- Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom, Rua Bom Jesus, Brazil, commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley.
For more details about the innovative work of all 10 finalists, go to the Geotourism Challenge 2009 website at www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge.
A panel of expert judges selected the 10 finalists in July, while the public chose the top three winners through online voting during a four-week period this summer, ending Aug. 12. The expert judges were Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement; Keith Bellows, a vice president of the National Geographic Society and editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine; Erika Harms, executive director of Sustainable Development, United Nations Foundation; Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet; Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted; and Dr. Yang Yuming, vice president of Southwest Forestry University, China.
About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding, and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building, and the sourcing of funding opportunities.
Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining, and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.
About National Geographic
The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 370 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the , visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.
For images of the three 2009 Geotourism Challenge winners, visit http://ftp.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/geotourism_challenge/
username: press
password: press
(PhysOrg.com) — Cat-grooming robot? It can happen, and it has, with software engineer Taylor Veltrops show of all he can do with the research robot Nao, along with the motion-sensing Kinect device, a head-mounted display (HMD), Wii remotes, and treadmill. The Tokyo-based Veltrop has a video out that demonstrates how Nao, a humanoid robot, is able to take a brush and gently apply it to the cat. With the exception of being bopped on the head, the cat indicates that it is a pleasant experience.
Software Engineer Instrumental in Scaling Facebookas Hadoop Environment Brings Extensive Experience to Leading Infrastructure Management Software Company
(PRWeb February 21, 2012)
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9180125.htm
The 2000 years old Greek scientific computer which was used to predict lunar and solar eclipses is now processing astronomical information with plastic gears! Andrew Carol, a software engineer at Apple and, has built the fantastic Antikythera out of Lego . He did the amazing job using Lego Technic which is a specialized line ofA Lego read more
Some people like to do things differently. If they didn’t we wouldn’t have inventors or weird people. Michael Killian is an inventor. He is a 46 year old software engineer from Dublin, to be exact, who recently invented a Sideways Bike and, not too long ago, invented the Sideways Scooter. Some people may think a Sideways Bike is a little weird, but I think it’s oddly creative. readmore
A News Blog about Motorcycle Accident Attorneys Orange County. Personal injury is a legal term for an injury to the body, mind or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property. The term is most commonly used to refer to a type of tort lawsuit alleging that the plaintiff’s injury has been caused by the negligence of another, but also arises in defamation torts. The most common types of personal injury claims are road traffic accidents, accidents at work, tripping accidents, assault claims, accidents in the home, product defect accidents (product liability) and holiday accidents. The term personal injury also incorporates medical and dental accidents (which lead to numerous medical negligence claims every year) and conditions that are often classified as industrial disease cases, including asbestosis and peritoneal mesothelioma, chest diseases (e.g., emphysema, pneumoconiosis, silicosis, chronic bronchitis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and chronic obstructive airways disease), vibration white finger, occupational deafness, occupational stress, contact dermititis, and repetitive strain injury cases. If the negligence of another party can be proved, the injured party may be entitled to monetary compensation from that party. In the United States, this system is complex and controversial, with critics calling for various forms of tort reform. From: Motorcycle Accident Attorneys Orange County. Attorneys and lawyers often represent clients on a “contingency basis,” in which the attorney’s fee is a percentage of the plaintiff’s eventual compensation, payable when the case is resolved. Oftentimes, having an attorney becomes essential because cases become extremely complex, such as in medical malpratice cases. From: Motorcycle Accident Attorneys Orange County.
Infoupdater.com provides Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, SEM, Web Design, and News Content For Websites and Blogs. What are Robotic Blogs? Robotic blogs are WordPress blogs that have dynamic content. These blogs are relevant to your website and are updated automatically everyday by our system without any interference on your part. The content is unique and is based on a patent pending technology. Since they are updated as new content is created, they are self updated and Google loves it. The content is News links and News description extracted from 120,000 RSS pages all over the Internet. It is usually a combination from several RSS pages. This combination is unique and fresh to Google. Since we have control over their creation, we make them relevant to your website and we also place relevant back links (with your keywords anchored) from these websites. From: Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, SEM, Blog and Web Design Services
Senior Housing 55 offers the real time news on Assisted Living, Elder Abuse, Geriatric, and Research Studies
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Personal Injury Lawyer Los Angeles – FREE CONSULTATION by Personal Injury Attorney Los Angeles – Legal Defenders, Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers – Get a FREE CONSULTATION from a Personal Injury Lawyer Los Angeles from Law Offices of Burg and Brock, who have won over $100 million in verdicts and settlements for clients
Car Motorcycle Accident Attorney – FREE CONSULTATION by Car Motorcycle Accident Attorney Los Angeles – Legal Defenders, Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers – Get a FREE CONSULTATION from a Personal Injury Lawyer Los Angeles from Law Offices of Burg and Brock, who have won over $100 million in verdicts and settlements for clients
Car Motorcycle Accident Attorney – FREE CONSULTATION by Car Motorcycle Accident Attorney Los Angeles – Legal Defenders, Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers – Get a FREE CONSULTATION from a Personal Injury Lawyer Los Angeles from Law Offices of Burg and Brock, who have won over $100 million in verdicts and settlements for clients
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