The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”.
It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 145 Laureates from 61 countries.
Presented annually in Stockholm at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament, the Right Livelihood Award is usually shared by four Recipients, but not all Laureates receive a cash award. Often an Honorary Award is given to a person or group whose work the Jury wishes to recognise but who is not primarily in need of monetary support. The prize money in 2011 was 150,000 €. The prize money is for ongoing successful work, never for personal use.
2011 Laureate Ina May Gaskin has been called “the most famous midwife in the world”. A pioneer in a millennium-old profession on the brink of extinction in her country, she combines scientific evidence and analysis with her own broad experience in exercising natural medicine. Ina May Gaskin is a role model for midwives who still dare to think in different paths, trying to implement more humane obstetrics in their countries, and providing women with the chance to choose the way of giving birth that seems right for them.
<http://www.rightlivelihood.org/inamay_gaskin.html>
