A NEW GENERATION OF PLANET PROBLEM SOLVERS

A New Generation of PlanetPROBLEM

Three Rolex Laureates tell us how they are tackling some of the world's biggest problems

In 1976 Rolex’s ground-breaking Oyster watch, the world’s first waterproof watch, celebrated its 50th anniversary. To honor the stellar achievement that changed the world of watchmaking, Rolex launched a new program, the Rolex Awards for Enterprise.

The award is as singular as the watch it pays tribute to. It is given to remarkable men and women who are tackling chal-

lenges in unique, inventive ways as they attempt to solve problems such as climate change, pollution, health care, or the im-

periled state of the ocean. The award winners draw on personal reserves of enterprising and innovative spirit, the same

SOLVERS

Rolex Laureates Felix Brooks-church, Miranda Wang and Gina Moseley

qualities that Rolex prides itself on possessing.

The awards stand out for another very important reason as well—they are given to those who would not otherwise have access

to traditional fundraising, due in part to the originality and uniqueness of each winners’ pioneering visions. Nearly 1000 hopefuls

apply each year to receive the award, out of which only five are chosen.

Since its inception Rolex has awarded 155 exceptional winners. Here are three of the awardees who, with Rolex’s support,

are dedicated to making the world a better place.

For more than four decades, through the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, Rolex has supported exceptional individuals who have the courage and conviction to take on major challenges.

FELIX BROOKS-CHURCH HIS MISSION: SOLVING POOR NUTRITION

One of the saddest statistics of our time is that 15,000 children die

worldwide each and every day, largely due to poor nutrition.

Enough, thought Felix Brooks-church. So he came up with a

solution to stop the tragic losses of life. He worked out a way to

solve the nutrition crisis by adding basic nutrients—Vitamin B12, folic

acid, iron, and zinc—to a universal diet staple, flour. He started a pro-

gram in Tanzania, patenting a “dosifier”, a device that looks like an

electronic scale, that releases precise quantities of nutrients as the

bags are being filled with flour in small, local flour mills, mills often

overlooked by any sort of government assistance.

Brooks-church’s program has taken off and helps nourish two

million people a day, and all for a reasonable cost. Less than $1

dollar will fortify food for one person—a child, mother or baby--for an entire year.

Brooks-church was struck with the pervasiveness and devastating result poor nutrition can have on health and life itself when he vol-

unteered to run a program in Cambodia to get children off the streets

and into safe environments. He saw first-hand the toll that poor nu-

trition took on the youngsters. “These children were often sick.

They had weak immune systems, low IQs, learning disabilities and

some died from things that you should

not die from.”

The program is set to expand to

other countries. “What we are doing is

not just adding nutrients to food,”

Brooks-church said. “What we are

doing is ensuring a basic human right,

to good nutrition.”

Felix Brooks-church MIRANDA WANG HER MISSION: SOLVING PLASTIC POLLUTION

In 2010 Miranda Wang’s high school

environmental club took a field trip to a

local landfill in Vancouver. The teenager

was appalled by what she saw: mountains of trash representing only

two or three days of Vancouver’s municipal waste—and mountains

contained mostly plastic. She was even more horrified when she

learned that this heap of garbage would soon be carted away to

other landfill, or be incinerated or, more likely, dumped in the ocean

and replaced with a new monumental collection of polluting plastic

waste.

Wang and her fellow student Jeanny Yao knew something had to

be done, and decided that they could do it. They came up with a so-

lution: why not utilize a bacteria that would feed on plastic to elimi-

nate the problem. With the help of a professor, they located two

such bacterium in a local river.

Miranda Wang

The plan, while brilliant and effective, could not readily be applied on

the global scale that Wang and Yao wanted, and that the world

needs. So they developed another strategy, using recycling tech-

nologies that transform the plastic into quality materials that can

be used on a grand scale and tapped to make other products, like

perfume.

The program is currently undergoing a pilot run in San Jose, Cali-

fornia, before being rolled out on a bigger scale to tackle the world-

wide problem of the 340 million metric tons of plastic being produced

every year. By 2050, unless something drastic is done, there will be

12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills. Wang credits the Rolex

Award for Enterprise with helping the solution she and Yao devel-

oped go global. “Rolex has shone a light on the work we do, and

boosted my fundraising to scale up this new technological invention.”

GINA MOSELEY

HER MISSION: SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING

In the north of Greenland there are caves that are so distant and

difficult to reach that they have only ever been spotted at a distance,

but never entered. Gina Moseley and a team of six explorers are de-

termined to do so for a very important reason; each cave holds a

treasure trove of information that could help prevent our earth from

literally drowning. That’s the premise and the promise of Artic explorer Mosely.

The caves are believed to hold calcite deposits known as speleo-

thems. “Caves are like time machines,” Mosely told Rolex. “Calcite

forms layers, like tree rings. We can analyze each layer to get infor-

mation about the past climate.” From studying past cooling and

warming periods, scientists can gain insight into the impact the cur-

rent melting of the polar caps will have on everything from rainfall pat-

terns to ocean currents.

And what a past the northern caves will provide. Currently scien-

tists are studying ice cores that are “only” 28,000 years old. The spe-

leothems Mosely plans to reach are anticipated to date back half a

million years.

The work is vital and can’t come a moment too soon. Polar re-

gions are heating up twice as fast as other areas on the earth. In

2019 so much of the ice in Greenland melted that it added 12 billion

tons of water to the ocean in one day. Said Mosely “The Rolex

Awards are pretty much the only program out there that could or

would support such an expedition.”

Gina Moseley