Wins Top Prize
for Social Entrepreneurship
PERC’s Enviropreneur Camp was named the top winner of the 2007 for Social Entrepreneurship. This multi-faceted awards program, managed by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Arlington, Virginia , attracted more than 200 entries from 53 countries this year. The award recognizes innovative civil society programs sponsored by independent research institutes around the world.
Bobby McCormick, director
of the Enviropreneur
Camp
The Camp won Templeton’s highest distinction this year because it "encourages participants to discover how individual initiative, property rights, and the free market can be used to solve environmental problems."
The Enviropreneur Camp, sponsored by PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center, is an intense two-week educational experience in Bozeman, Montana, for environmental entrepreneurs who want to have a better understanding of how business and economic principles can be applied to environmental problems. Camp participants interact with leading experts in the field of free market environmentalism, including "enviropreneurs"—those who have researched and applied markets in their environmental work.
A judge for the competition had this to say about the Camp: "PERC’s Enviropreneur Camp … seems to be a model of what other organizations should strive to do. The Camp is educational, but it also goes out of its way to introduce a free market perspective into discussions of environmental policy. Consequently students will leave the Camp understanding more about the environment and also more about nongovernmental approaches to what almost everyone today believes should be left up to government. For this reason, PERC should win the Templeton Prize in the Social Entrepreneurship category."
The Templeton Freedom Awards program is named in honor of famed investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. In announcing the award, Atlas President Alejandro Chafuen said, "Economic and political freedom are advancing globally, and men and women focused on ideas, rather than violence, are leading the way. The winners of this year’s Templeton Awards demonstrate the breadth of this movement."
The Enviropreneur Camp is making a difference. As another judge noted in the final evaluations, "The camp has clearly had an impact as indicated by the activities undertaken by some of its graduates."
