Daimler Rewards Mondialogo Engineering Winners

The third annual Mondialogo Engineering Awards have been were presented by Daimler and UNESCO yesterday at a ceremony held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Thirty international teams of young engineers have been awarded for project proposals involving the reduction of poverty, the promotion of sustainable development as well as climate change mitigation.

Eight teams received the Gold Awards, consisting of 15,000 euros, twelve teams received the Silver Awards, consisting of 10,000 euros, while ten student teams were presented with the Bronze Awards, worth 5,000 euros. In fact, these funds are intended to be used in initiating or support project implementation.

According to Daimler, around one third of the finalist team members from 28 countries are women - well over the average of 10-15 percent of women engineering students in most countries.

Every project team was made up of groups of students from two technical universities or colleges, with one group coming from a developing country and the other from an industrialized nation. The teams had six months in which to devise a solution that will have a direct practical benefit for the population of a developing country.

The Mondialogo Community Award was presented by Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, while Al Jazeera’s Stephen Cole served as Master of Ceremony.

Alongside the Mondialogo Engineering Award, the Mondialogo partnership launched by Daimler and UNESCO also consists of the Mondialogo School Contest and an Internet Portal in five languages.This cooperation is intended to promote understanding, tolerance and friendship between people with different cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds.