2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair recently wrote to update us on the amazing success of this year’s Open Architecture Challenge. The challenge was for teams of teachers, students, architects and designers to work together to design the classroom of the future for a school of their own choosing. Tens of thousands of participants and hundreds of schools from 45 countries submitted their designs.

The submission period ended on June 1 and will now go through a three step jury process. The winners will be announced in the fall.

Equally as exciting is the groundbreaking of the SIDAREC community center - the first winner of the OAN challenge - tomorrow in Kenya.

The Open Architecture Network is truly helping make innovative design more accessible.

Opening this Friday in New York and elsewhere over the summer,  Youssou D’Nour: I BRING WHAT I LOVE, is a beautiful documentary about the power of one man’s voice to inspire change. Its message of compassion and love reverberates with the message of Karen Armstrong’s wish for a Charter for Compassion.

The film follows N’Dour, the highest selling African artist of all time and a devout Sufi Muslim, as he releases a deeply personal and religious album called Egypt in the hope of promoting a more tolerant and compassionate face of Islam. Almost instantly, his fellow Senegalese reject the album, and denounce his actions as blasphemous. The film follows N’Dour for over two years – in Africa, Europe, and America – to tell the story of how he faces these challenges and eventually wins over audiences both at home and abroad.  ”People don’t have to associate Islam with fear and sadness. Why is that the only image of Islam in the media?” states D’Nour.

Through vibrant African beats, the film reveals the possibility of tolerance among religions and cultures, and shows how one man who lives by his convictions can create positive change through music.  Youssou’s message is ultimately one of compassion and love inspired by his embrace of the Islamic faith.

On October 3, the world first saw TED Prize winner James Nachtwey’s photos of XDR-TB. Now Washington is taking notice!

Our advocacy partner RESULTS, with support from Eli Lilly and BD, launched the exhibit with a congressional reception entitled “Seeing Change”.  The stunning photographs remain on view at the Russell Rotunda in the Capitol Building for this week only.

Hosting the event, Representative Eliot Engel (NY-17) and Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) spoke with passion on the importance of James’s work and the need for other members of Congress to see his striking photos.

“You look at tuberculosis, and it’s 1.6 million people per year die of it. Just incredible. I think that most Members of Congress have no idea that it’s so many people all at once. [...]

These photographs just tell it all. I wish everybody could see them so people would understand that this is a disease that is not something that’s in the distant past, but something that we need to fight each and every day.” - Representative Eliot Engel (NY-17) [picture, right]

“They say 2 billion people in the world carry the TB bacteria. They say that 10-15 million Americans carry the TB bacteria. Nobody, nobody in this body knows that– almost nobody in this country knows the potential seriousness of this [...]

I hadn’t really thought much about TB [...] until Joanne [Carter] talked to me about it. And one of the beauties about the House or Senate is you can take an issue and if you really care about it, you can educate your colleagues about it [...] and move this issue forward.” - Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) [picture, left]

Next week, a House of Representatives committee will meet to make critical decisions about the amount of U.S. funding for global TB (the Senate make similar determinations next month). Rep. Payne (D-NJ), a leader on the fight against global TB, and Rep. Don Young (R-AK), have initiated a sign-on letter to the Chairwoman Lowey (D-NY) and ranking member Granger (R-TX) of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee requesting $650 million for global TB programs. $650 million would put the U.S. on track to meeting funding targets in the Lantos-Hyde Act passed in 2008 ($4 billion over five years) and achieving the Global Plan to Stop TB.

Take action today.  Call your representative and ask him/her to sign-on to the letter. RESULTS has prepared a script to help you on the call. The deadline for signatures is Friday, June 12.

While the federal budget and appropriations process can seem impossibly esoteric, lives hang in balance. James’ photographs are a powerful and timely reminder of the human faces of the drug-resistant TB epidemic.

As we continue to help realize the wishes made by our 2009 TED Prize winners, the TED Prize team is also looking ahead to TED2010.  There are just 6 weeks left to nominate individuals for next year’s TED Prize.

We are looking for inventors and entrepreneurs, designers and artists, visionaries and mavericks, protectors and persuaders. Our prize-winners may be very different, but they will have this in common: They will be doing something that has extraordinary potential, something whose positive influence could spread, transcending borders, something that can contribute to the future of life on Earth. We are looking for people who can tap into the energy of the TED Community and inspire them to come along on the journey of making this great change in the world.

Do you know someone - personally, professionally or by reputation - who fits the bill?  If so, please fill out the nomination form by July 15 in order to have your nominee considered for the 2010 TED Prize.

Nominations must be kept CONFIDENTIAL from nominees.

Today the TED Open Translation Project launched, bringing TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world, by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts, and the ability for volunteers to translate any talk into any language.  A year in the making, more than 200 volunteer translators have already contributed, allowing the site to launch with 300 translations in 40 languages. The project is generously sponsored by Nokia.

TED and the TED Prize are so global in nature, the ability to share talks and wishes in any language is crucial to success.  Now worshipers in Pakistan can watch Karen Armstrong’s talk in Urdu.  Environmentalists in Brazil can watch Sylvia Earle’s talk in Portuguese.  Teachers in Latin America can watch Dave Eggers’ talk in Spanish.

Don’t see your language there?  You can volunteer to translate talks yourself.

More details below:

The TED Open Translation Project is one of the most comprehensive attempts by a major media platform to subtitle and index online video content. It’s also a groundbreaking effort in the public, professional use of volunteer translation.

The subtitles
Every talk on TED.com will now have English subtitles, which can be toggled on or off by the user. The number of other languages varies from talk to talk, based on the number of volunteers who elect to translate it.

The transcripts
Along with subtitles, every talk on TED.com has a time-coded, interactive transcript, allowing users to select a phrase, and have the video play from that point. The transcripts are fully indexable by search engines, exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately lead you to the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses his green roof project for Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

The translations
Rather than professionally translate talks into just a handful of languages, TED developed (with our technology partner, dotSUB) a set of tools that allow participants around the world to translate their favorite talks into their own language. This approach is scalable, and — importantly — allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities.

To seed the site, a handful of talks were professionally translated into 20 languages. But all translations going forward will be provided by volunteers. In fact, volunteer translators have already contributed more than 200 published translations to the project (with 450 more in development). These volunteers range from well-organized groups working together in their own language, to lone translators working individually and matched by TED with others.

At launch, TED’s Open Translation Project will include more than 300 translations, in more than 40 languages, including Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kirghiz, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Our translators hail from cities from Beijing to Buenos Aires; Tehran to Tel Aviv; Espoo, Finland, to Barranquilla, Colombia.

Here’s what to look for (don’t miss the interactive transcript! It’s cool):

* English subtitles: Every talk now has English subtitles. Turn them on with the pulldown menu below the player.

* Translated subtitles: Some 300 translations of TEDTalks are already live on the site, from our corps of dedicated volunteers (you can join! see below). Browse to see what’s available in your language: http://www.ted.com/index.php/OpenTranslationProject

* Time-coded transcript: Every talk includes an interactive, time-coded transcript. Click on any phrase and the video will start from that point. This makes the full content of the talk indexable on Google, in all the available languages. The transcript language can be toggled separately from the subtitles, so you can watch an English talk with Japanese subtitles and an Urdu transcript, creating a “Rosetta Stone” effect.

* Volunteer translators: Each talk credits the translator and reviewer who worked on it; the link goes to their member profile, which shows a “Translations” tab. Join the growing list of translators: http://www.ted.com/index.php/OpenTranslationProject

As today is Earth Day, we wanted to take a look back at one of the first TED Prize winners. Famous for his large-format color photographs of industrial and man-made landscapes, Edward Burtynsky’s TED talk focused on the stark beauty but troubling nature of humankind’s impact on the earth.  Reminding us both visually and verbally of the need to build sustainable world, his wish emphasized the need to develop a bottom-up strategy for protecting the environment.

Burtynsky wished to develop a program that would motivate kids to invent new ideas in sustainable living. Four years later, the result of his wish, a kids website called The GREENS, is going strong.

From the site:

With The GREENS, we get kids thinking about the world and their place in it. The GREENS project is upbeat and optimistic. We encourage kids to make informed choices and meaningful changes. Through the animated episodic adventures, a blog, kids’ mail, and regular updates, we explore green living, sustainability, ecology, environmental care, and social equity. We nudge kids to research, to challenge, to discover, and to take action whereever and whenever they can.

Share the site with a child today.  Arm them with the tools to build themselves a better future.

For those of you who use twitter, follow the TED Prize to hear updates on wishes, winners, and other inside scoop on the TED Prize.