Rodrigo Baggio: Brazil (elected in 1996)
Organization: Committee for Democracy in Information Technology

Rodrigo Baggio spearheads a movement to equip young people in low-income communities with computer skills, expanding their job opportunities and their access to modern society. After a successful pilot training program in two favelas in Rio de Janeiro in early 1995, Rodrigo and a small group of volunteer associates formed a permanent organizational structure for the work, which is growing explosively. As a result of the program, many participants have found new, well-paying jobs, and others have been promoted to assignments that would not have been open to them without computer skills. Rodrigo and his associates cite many cases in which participants have developed renewed interest in formal schooling, resisted strong lures to join drug gangs or participate in other illicit activities and otherwise manifested heightened self-esteem. Many of the program's "graduates" are putting their computer skills to work in various community activities, including health education and AIDS awareness campaigns.

Vera Gainsley Cordeiro: Brazil (elected in 1993)
Organization: Associação Saude Crianca Renascer

Vera is a pediatrician who could not stand to see terribly or terminally ill children obtain treatment in her hospital only to be released to such poverty that they could not recover or have hope of comfort. Renascer does not simply provide families with medicine or nutritional supplements, though lobbying by Dr. Cordeiro and others has created a network of contacts with pharmaceutical laboratories and food companies that make this service possible. Through its close relationship with the families, Renascer identifies the most critical problem the family has, and through a process of mutual understanding and exchange of services between the families and Renascer, the problem is attacked.

Tri Mumpuni (Puni): Indonesia (elected in 2006)
Organization: People Centered Economic & Business Institute (IBEKA)

By creating economic incentives and financing programs to unlock the power of hydro, Tri Mumpuni is helping rural Indonesia realize its best option for a reliable power supply. The sustainability of the project depends heavily upon the community ownership of the system. It allows the community to have equity in funding the system, make decisions for its design and operation, and develop the rural programs that will benefit from the generated revenue. The provision of rural micro-hydropower (MHP) plants has now become an economic investment activity.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) adopted it as a Public Private Partnership model in the Asia Pacific region. Slowly, the financial barriers to develop the MHP system are being removed. A legal framework, however, must be in place to facilitate the spread of the model. Mumpuni has also been working on lobbying the government to establish a rural electricity finance institution.

Noel de Villiers: South Africa (elected in 2006)
Organization: Open Africa

Through his organization, Open Africa, Noel is building a pan-African network of urban and rural tourism routes that are locally owned and managed, but marketed internationally. The vision behind this network is to create economic and social opportunities by harnessing the growing potential of tourism in Africa for marginalized communities. He is putting control of this potential into the hands of local communities by working with them to identify, promote, and manage their own cultural and natural assets. These efforts create new businesses, preserve cultural heritage, and foster community pride of civic cooperation and leadership in a new generation. Noel's model encourages marginalized local communities to form their own businesses to serve the tourism market, thereby affording them entry to a previously unreachable economic system.