The Ashoka-Changemakers community voted for the winners of the "market-based solutions strategies that benefit low-income communities" competition from a slate of 8 citizen sector finalists and 5 business sector finalists selected by a panel of judges. There were two winners from each sector - continue reading to learn more, or visit the Changemakers home page to learn more.

The 1st place winner in the business sector is Mango Tree Educational Enterprises from Uganda. Mango Tree manufactures educational products including games, toys, pictorial charts, and counseling tools for health care workers, and large format story charts. It provides training to use these tools to encourage active learning and participatory teaching. The tools are designed collaboratively with grassroots educators. They are culturally relevant, durable, inexpensive, and made from local materials that can be replicated by users (such as grain sacks, bottle tops, recycled flip-flops, bicycle spokes, gourds, and plastic jerry cans).

The 2nd place winner in the business sector is Sambazon Sustainable Açai (Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon) from Brazil. Sambazon purchases organic, fair trade, and sustainably wild harvested Açaí Palmberry fruits from over 940 low-income families living inside 66,000 acres of the Varzea Eco-Region 147 of the Amazon Rainforest. These low-income native producers are organized into four cooperatives and are the main beneficiaries of Sambazon's operational model. Sambazon industrializes the palmberry fruits into pulps, beverages, and ice creams, and supplements and sells these finished products that carry the Sambazon brand name into the U.S. natural food and beverage market.

The 1st place winner in the citizen sector is the Rural Women Bank from India. The bank creates savings, credit, and micro-health insurance products that serve the needs of poor women in rural areas, primarily street and milk vendors, shepherd and nomadic women, craft workers, and small entrepreneurs. In 2004, the bank successfully lobbied India's Revenue Department to include women's names on property papers. Today, nearly 600,000 women have been able to get a share of their household property.

The 2nd place winner in the citizen sector is the RUGMARK Consumer Awareness Campaign based in the U.S. RUGMARK is one of the world's first labor monitoring programs and is at the forefront of the movement to end child slavery in South Asia's handmade rug industry. RUGMARK's innovative system includes certifying and labeling rugs as child labor free; offering educational opportunities to children at risk of and rescued from exploitation; and building a market for child labor free products in the U.S.

View the 4 winners and 13 top finalists, selected from a field of 128 competition entries from 38 countries, on www.changemakers.net.