WASHINGTON D.C. - The U.S. Agency for International Development has won the 2010 Communicator Awards Gold Award of Excellence for a video on the problems faced by miners working with alluvial diamonds in the Central African Republic and a USAID program that helps them find solutions through technology and training.

The 24-minute documentary brings to life the eight-step process for the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development Project, PRADD, which translates customary rights, or those that are derived from custom, into statutory rights that have the force of law. The process combines community development techniques to identify, organize, and motivate miners with GPS devices to precisely locate their mining claims.

This USAID-funded pilot program was designed to improve the lives of diamond miners and their communities by developing methods to achieve clear, secure, and publicly acknowledged rights to land and resources.

The methodology developed by PRADD helps miners to affirm their customary property rights claims, providing them a measure of protection they never had before. It also offers a way to improve compliance with the Kimberley Process, which was developed to trace a diamond's origin to ensure that it was not used to fund violence.

The Communicator Awards, judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communications professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, the Communicator Awards receives over 9,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.