Upadhyay, who founded SAPPROS (Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal), was named the winner along with human rights and environmental activists from Nigeria, Brazil and Israel on Thursday.
Upadhyay was awarded "...for demonstrating over many years the power of community mobilisation to address the multiple causes of poverty even when threatened by political violence and instability", according to the award committee.[break]
The other winners are Nigeria´s Nnimmo Bassey, chairman of Friends of the Earth International, Austrian-Brazilian Bishop Erwin Kraeutler and Physicians for Human Rights Israel. They will split euro 200,000 cash award.
The award was founded by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull in 1980 to recognize work he felt was being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.
The awards will be presented to the four recipients in a ceremony at the Swedish Parliament on Dec. 6, four days before the Nobel Prizes are handed out. Upadhyay is the first Nepali to be receive the award.
Upadhyay, 65, had served chairman of the board and general manager of the Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal (1982-1990) and as a member of the National Planning Commission of Nepal (1990-1993).In 1975, he helped initiate the Small Farmer Development Programme (SFDP) which yielded substantial achievements in the fields of micro credit, low-cost drinking water supply schemes, tree planting, training and literacy through social mobilisation. In 1991, Upadhyay initiated SAPPROS (Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal).
SAPPROS works in the poorest 12 districts of Nepal. In total, by 2010, SAPPROS had formed 2,434 Savings and Credit Groups and 273 Cooperatives with a membership of 1.3 million of whom about 40% are women.
Upadhyay´s experience has been recognised internationally in the form of invitations to act as a consultant for an agricultural credit review in Bangladesh (for the Asian Development Bank), irrigation management in Thailand, rural institutions in Nepal and local governance in Mongolia (UN Development Programme), and community development and integrated crop and food production in Afghanistan.
He was also a member of the Independent SARC (South Asian Regional Cooperation) Commission on Poverty organised by heads of state of the region in 1991. He has served on several committees in Nepal, among them the Prime Minister´s coordination committee on decentralisation.
Upadhyay is also a board member of the Poverty Alleviation Fund.
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