16 Think Tanks from 14 Countries Win 2007 Templeton Freedom Awards

Arlington, VA, March 12, 2007 – Think tanks from the United States and 13 other countries have been named winners of 2007 Templeton Freedom Awards, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which manages the competition, announced today. Winning institutions come from a widely diverse geographical area, ranging from Montana to Montenegro, Brazil to Belarus, Sweden to Japan.

The multi-faceted awards program, which attracted this year more than 200 entries from 53 countries, recognizes innovative civil society programs sponsored by independent research institutes around the world. The program is named in honor of famed investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. “Economic and political freedom are advancing globally, and men and women focused on ideas, rather than violence, are leading the way,” said Atlas President Alejandro Chafuen. “The winners of this year’s Templeton Awards demonstrate the breadth of this movement.”

Templeton Freedom Prizes for Excellence in Promoting Liberty are awarded in four categories: Free Market Solutions to Poverty, Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Values, and Student Outreach. Winning institutes in each category receive $10,000, while the runners up receive $5,000 each. Atlas singled out the following:

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Michigan won first place for its Connecting Good Intentions to Sound Economics Advertising Campaign, which used the power of the popular media to challenge common beliefs about how to alleviate poverty. Using the tagline, “Don’t Just Care, Think!,” the project used documentaries, short films, public service announcements, print ads, and other educational materials to make the case that good intentions alone will not help the world’s poor. The second place winner was the Montenegro Business Alliance for its Flat Tax project, which helped move a proposal for a flat tax from theory to implementation. Montenegro now has a flat 9% corporate tax rate – the lowest level in Europe – and a flat 15% personal tax rate, which is scheduled to be reduced to 9% by 2010.

The Property and Environment Research Center in Montana won the top prize for its two-week Enviropreneur Camp for environmental entrepreneurs, or “enviropreneurs.” The Camp encourages participants to discover how individual initiative, property rights, and the free market can be used to solve environmental problems. The second-place prize was awarded to Civitas: The Institute for the Study of Civil Society of the United Kingdom for its Supplementary Schools Project. Rather than just documenting problems in the educational system, Civitas launched its own schools to provide an alternative. The no-frills schools focus on high-quality teaching of a traditional curriculum, including phonics-based reading and math without calculators, as well as small class sizes and regular contact with parents. The schools target children from the London’s poorest neighborhoods – including recent immigrants from Bengal and Bangladesh.

In response to the deteriorating image of the Argentine government after the 2001 social and economic crisis, the Foro de Estudios Sobre la Adminstración de Justicia in Buenos Aires (Forum for the Study of Judicial Administration) created the Prize for Judicial Excellence (PJE) to reward and encourage ethical, unbiased judges, and the efficient administration of justice. Sweden’s Ratio Institute received second place for its research on Markets, Morality, Trust and Growth. This project analyzed how a free economy provides incentives for moral behavior, largely because economic activity depends upon creating trust among unfamiliar parties.

The top prize in this category was given to the Scientific Research Mises Center of Belarus for various educational programs, which are conducted despite threats of reprisal from Belarus’ totalitarian government. The weekend schools, seminars, and camps help students understand the concepts of individual, economic and political freedom, which are relatively unknown in the country. The runner-up was the Liberalni Institut of the Czech Republic, whose Summer Education Programs about the importance of a free society targeted not only high school and university age students, but high school teachers as well. In addition, the Institute founded a High School Teachers Education Association in 2006, and provides member teachers with excerpts of classical literature on economics and philosophy, teaching manuals, and tests on key economic concepts and principles.

In addition to these prizes honoring specific projects, Atlas announced winners of 10 Templeton Freedom Award Grants, which are given to promising institutes, especially in parts of the world where there are few independent voices advocating the ideas of freedom. Each winner receives a grant of $10,000 to help them continue their efforts. The 2007 winners are:

Center for Political Studies (Denmark) Centro de Investigaciones Economicas Nacionales (Guatemala) Foro de Estudios Sobre la Adminstración de Justicia (Argentina) Fundación Libertad y Democracia (Bolivia) Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (Brazil) Instituto de Libre Empresa (Peru) Japanese for Tax Reform (Japan) Prague Security Studies Institute (Czech Republic) Scientific Research Mises Center (Belarus) Think Tank Romania (Romania) Honorable Mentions

Seven additional institutes received Honorable Mentions and $5,000 grants. These are:

Alternate Solutions Institute (Pakistan) Conservative Institute of M.R. Stefanik (Slovakia) Fundación IDEA (Mexico) Independent Center for Studies in Economics and Law (Romania) Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security (Hungary) Invertir Institute: An Initiative of Procapitales and UPC (Peru) Lion Rock Institute (Hong Kong) The Atlas Economic Research Foundation has been supporting independent think tanks that support the free society for more than 25 years. Atlas currently works with more than 250 think tanks in 80 countries. More than half of these organizations were assisted in their formative years by Atlas through financial support or advisory services. The Templeton Freedom Awards program was launched in 2003 with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, with more than $1,250,000 in prizes and grants distributed. The program utilizes a prestigious panel of independent judges to identify outstanding work by independent research institutes. For more information about this year’s winners, please contact Atlas at 703-934-6969.

This think tank does GREAT work promoting liberty, freedom, and free market capitalism around the globe. They recognize that these principles are advanced by ideas -- thinking and then working to promote these core values and concepts into the culture and political life in the third world countries that need these uplifting ideas. Atlas helps to incubate think tanks in third world and developing countries to help promote and extend these ideas. The great investor, John Templeton, recognizes probably better than anyone the power of ideas so he has funded these awards to recognize the best ideas coming out of these think tanks.

To bad thinking does not go hand in hand with doing.

It's also interesting that this award was given in Washington D.C. (i.e. Arlington); the universe's epicenter of thinking and not doing.BR>

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