July 2, 2004
Athens, Greece: To celebrate its 5th anniversary, ECOCLUB, (Web: www.ecoclub.com), the international ecotourism club, held its first annual Ecolodge project competition, the "ECOCLUB Ecolodge Award 2004". ECOCLUB Members were asked to choose by email vote from project proposals submitted by Ecolodges around the world. The winners were Ranweli Holiday Village of Sri Lanka, (http://ecoclub.com/ranweli) who proposed the creation of an organic vegetable plot and green house in school premises close to the Lodge. The all-girl school has over one thousand students.

Presenting the award at a live on-line event, ECOCLUB Founder, Antonis B. Petropoulos, noted that "this new Award is not a beauty contest, but aims to implement and verify the implementation of meaningful small-scale projects, by existing, successful, genuine Ecolodges, selected in a democratic fashion. ECOCLUB believes that genuine Ecotourism should be self-sustained, and supported from within, from its roots, rather than from governmental organisations and charities that arbitrarily splash out millions to the wrong hands, without even following up, and in so doing encourage corruption."

RANWELI Director, Mr Chandra de Silva noted that "the ECOCLUB Ecolodge Award will further strengthen us in our endeavour to link the community with our enterprise. We hope to extend our Bio-Vegetable and pesticide free farming project through school children to the community, to areas of environmental conservation and education of the children. We thank the members of the Ecoclub for giving us this opportunity of taking forward the project."

The 2004 Award is accompanied by the monetary sum of Euros 500, raised by ECOCLUB Members, and this amount is meant to cover the expenses of the project. Half of the funds will be awarded immediately, and the other half on completion of the project. The project implementation will be monitored and details, including photos, will be made available on-line, at http://ecoclub.com/award.html as the program progresses.

ECOCLUB is an international ecotourism club / ecotourism cooperative, with members in over 50 countries. It is managed by ECOCLUB S.A. of Athens, Greece. On July 1, 2004 ECOCLUB celebrated its 5 years promoting genuine ecotourism.

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