WASHINGTON, March 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Global Water Challenge (GWC) and Ashoka's Changemakers invite everyone to join "Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis," an online competition to discover and support entrepreneurs with groundbreaking approaches to the world's water and sanitation challenges. Also today, director of Oscar-winning films, Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur launches a blog on Changemakers.net inspired by his latest film, Paani ("Water"), which will examine the daily struggle for water in the slums of Mumbai.

"In celebration of World Water Day, we join today all social innovators from around the world who are making access to clean drinking water and sanitation a reality," said Ashoka's Changemakers Executive Director, Charlie Brown.

Innovators must submit their entries by March 26, 2008. The GWC is pleased to announce that upon the close of the competition, selected entries will be invited to submit proposals for funding consideration. With a gift from The Coca-Cola Company, US$1 million in grants is available from GWC to implement innovative entrepreneurial approaches that further its mission of universal access to water and sanitation.

More than 100 innovations have already poured in from 35 countries. For example, in Sudan, an innovator has launched a bartering system to exchange a local natural resource for water treatment equipment that radically reduces waterborne diseases. A Nigerian entrepreneur creates cheap, clean, and sustainable energy from human waste. Anyone can review entries and get involved through open online discussions.

"We have both the resources and the will to live in a world in which everyone can drink clean water and use a safe toilet," said Paul Faeth, Executive Director of GWC. "This competition is showing the impact that social entrepreneurs working in the farthest corners of the world can have."

Global Water Challenge is a coalition of leading organizations, which have joined forces to catalyze transformational change in the water and sanitation sector. www.globalwaterchallenge.org

Ashoka's Changemakers is building an "open source" online community that competes to surface the best social solutions to the world's most pressing issues. To date, Changemakers has attracted more than 2,000 solutions from more than 125 countries. www.changemakers.net.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Since 1981, Ashoka has elected over 3000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 70 countries. Working with these social entrepreneurs, Ashoka builds communities of innovators who work collectively to transform society and design new ways for the citizen sector to become more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. For more information, please visit www.ashoka.org.

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