Fueling Innovation, Toyota Awards Grants to Mothers of Invention at Newsweek & The Daily Beast's Fourth Annual Women in the World Summit

NEW YORK, April 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovation, creativity and courage are being rewarded at the fourth annual Women in the World Summit.  Three Toyota Driving Solutions grants of $50,000 each were pledged today by Toyota for women selected as "Mothers of Invention" at the Summit.  The $150,000 in grants were awarded to the recipients who are addressing some of today's most pressing global problems with ingenuity. Recipients include Kativa M. Shukla, founder and CEO of Fenugreen; Caitria O' Neill and Morgan O' Neill, co-founders and chief executives of Recovers.org; and Sejal Hathi and Tara Roberts, co-founders of girltank.

"It's an honor to return as a sponsor of the Women in the World Summit," said Julie Hamp, Chief Communications Officer for Toyota in North America, and summit co-presenter. "Toyota is proud to demonstrate its ongoing commitment to women by honoring the Mothers of Invention – courageous and innovative leaders who are making a difference in their communities and the world."

Toyota awarded the Mothers of Invention honorees with $50,000 grants to recognize the recipients' creativity, drive and determination in fostering social good while supporting their projects that impact positive change.  Toyota also surprised the Mothers of Invention with an additional $15,000 grant for each of the women to "pay-it-forward" to another innovative organization or cause of her choice.  The "pay-it-forward" grants were presented so that honorees could help a budding Mother of Invention and continue to share good ideas and make great things happen in the future.

The Summit, hosted by Newsweek & The Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown, of which Toyota is the presenting sponsor, was held at the David H. Koch Theater at New York's Lincoln Center and featured two days of programming and panels aimed at addressing urgent issues facing girls and women worldwide. This year's participants included Meryl Streep, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Tina Brown, Dr. Hawa Abdi, Tererai Trent, Ambassador Susan E. Rice, Eva Longoria, Michaela DePrince, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Diane von Furstenberg, Anne Finucane, America Ferrera, Tom Hanks, Lesley Stahl, Cynthia McFadden, Patricia Amira and many others.

About the Mothers of Invention:

Kavita M. Shukla
Founder/CEO Fenugreen
Kavita Shukla is the inventor and founder/CEO of Fenugreen, a social enterprise addressing the major global challenge of food spoilage with a simple solution: FreshPaper. Shukla developed FreshPaper in high school, after she discovered its active ingredients in a home remedy given to her by her grandmother in India. The product allows users to keep produce fresh for up to four times longer than has so far been possible. Today, FreshPaper is used by farmers and consumers across the globe, and Fenugreen is establishing initiatives to benefit local food banks in the U.S. and small-scale farmers in the developing world.

Caitria and Morgan O'Neill
Founders of Recovers.org
After a tornado destroyed their Massachusetts home, the O'Neill sisters created an online organizing platform to help disaster-stricken communities quickly launch recovery efforts. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the Recovers.org toolkit helps communities match local resources with local needs using features such as volunteer management tools, donation databases and information hubs to make disaster response smarter.

Tara Roberts & Sejal Hathis
Founders of girltank.org
Girltank is an online crowd-funding platform that gives women and girls the opportunity to share their social initiatives with the world, and offers donors and investors an easy way to find and support these projects. Girltank provides a much-needed infrastructure for girls starting promising projects and helps them sustain their work and gain visibility as real innovators. Thus far, girltank has mobilized approximately 1,500 women change-makers from 104 countries.

For more information about the Mothers of Invention and the 2013 Women in the World Summit, please visit http://www.thedailybeast.com/sponsored/MothersofInvention.html.

About Toyota 
Toyota (NYSE:TM) established operations in the United States in 1957 and currently operates 10 manufacturing plants. There are nearly 1,500 Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealerships in the U.S. which sold more than two million vehicles in 2012. Toyota directly employs nearly 30,000 in the U.S. and its investment here is currently valued at more than $18 billion, including sales and manufacturing operations, research and development, financial services and design. Toyota's annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and services from U.S. suppliers totals more than $23 billion. 

For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyota.com or www.toyotanewsroom.com.

About Women in the World Summit
Newsweek & The Daily Beast's Women in the World Summit is centered on vivid journalistic storytelling, featuring inspiring women and men from diverse cultures and backgrounds. From CEOs and world leaders to artists, activists and firebrand dissidents, the summit tells the stories of the courageous and intelligent women who are battling the status quo in their countries, picking up the pieces in the aftermath of war and shattering glass ceilings in every sector. 

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20030501/TOYLOGO)

SOURCE Toyota