Updates
April 7, 2008 - This year's conference will be on Saturady, April 12, 2008. Please check the updated schedule and await further instructions via email (following registration).
March 7, 2008 - The SAID Volunteers meeting will be Friday, March 7 in Old Union (1st Floor Conference Rooms).
February 27, 2008 - Lifestraw Named World-Changing Idea
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 02.27.08
Lifestraw, the portable drinking filtration system, nabbed the top honor in the fifth Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas last Thursday. Worn around the neck and used like a regular straw, Lifestraw claims to filter 99.9999 percent of bacteria and 98.7 percent of viruses using a halogen-based resin.
Upon receiving the award from Her Royal Highness Princess Badiya of Jordan, which includes $50,000 cash and an equal sum in consultancy work, Lifestraw inventor Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen urged the audience to make the sub-Saharan Africa clean-water crisis as prominent an issue as AIDS relief or global-warming mitigation.
Saatchi's worldwide creative director Bob Isherwood had nothing but high praise for the company. "I think it's an amazing idea, a world-changing idea," he said. "You have such a huge proportion of the world's population that can't drink safe water; 6,000 children a day dying from polluted water. To have a straw that you wear around your neck that you can put in contaminated water and turn it immediately into totally safe water is incredible; it is world-changing."