Latin American Awards

On a recent trip to Latin America, Atlas president Alex Chafuen visited Latin American award winners. The think tanks earned their respective awards in the categories of Social Entrepreneurship, Student Outreach, Ethics and Values, Free Market Solutions to Poverty and Innovative Media.

• Centro Para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de America Latina (CADAL) won the 2011 Fancisco di Vitoria Prize for a Latin American think tank promoting human rights. A large portion of CADAL’s work focuses on human rights in politics.  Father Francisco de Vitoria, a XVIth century scholar, saw free-trade and private property as essential human rights.   CADAL continues to promote a free economy across the region and a considerable portion of its work focuses on human rights in the political arena.
• Junior Achievement Argentina won the 2011 Alberto Marten Prize for its work with social entrepreneurship. Junior Achievement in Argentina was founded by former Atlas fellow Eduardo Marty, and its efforts to promote entrepreneurship are having a positive effect in creating an entrepreneurial spirit to solve social problems.
• Libertad y Desarrollo, Chile, earned the 2011 Miguel Kast prize for Free Market Solutions to Poverty for it’s book “Seven for Seven,” which details the cases of seven schools in undeveloped areas who provide high quality education to their students. The book shows how despite adversity and working with poverty-stricken areas, these educational establishments have been able to successfully provide high quality educations. They have achieved this high quality by involving the whole community in the success of these schools, providing incentives for professors in terms of student attendance and results, as well as having strategically planned yearly goals and objectives. As the late Sir John Templeton often remarked, indirect solutions to poverty have proven more effective than direct support.  Improving education is one of these indirect solutions and is an essential tool for enabling all to have a better life.  LyD won the prize for its publications and research focusing on educational reform.
• Democracia y Mercado won the 2011 Latin American award for Innovative media for their production of a series of documentaries of entrepreneurs overcoming obstacles to successfully serve their consumers. These documentaries show case studies of entrepreneurs who have succeeded in their respective countries and industries by overcoming obstacles, relying on their creativity and alertness for opportunity and successfully serving their consumers.  DyM has produced documentaries in six countries in the past two years including Peru, Ecuador and Mexico. Due to the program’s success they plan to film in five more countries in 2012.
• The Instituto de Pensmiento Estrategico Agora (IPEA) has won the Marroquin Award for Student Outreach. This Mexican think tank has worked throughout the year with student chapters in different universities to develop a research document that provides public policy recommendations for the Mexico.  Each group worked separately on their specific topic under the supervision of IPEA’s lead economist. At the end of the process they created a single document based on these recommendations. During 2012 they will approach policymakers and other institutions in hopes of raising the youth’s voice and influencing social change in the country.

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