COBRATEX becomes a permanent member of the World Bamboo Organisation (WBO)
COBRATEX is honoured to have been offered to join the World Bamboo Organisation (WBO) as a World Bamboo Ambassador. The WBO’s mission is to promote the sustainable utilization of bamboo and educate globally on the merits that this grass gives our planet.
This prestigious award to our company is above all an important recognition from the international bamboo community. All the strategic decisions we have made over the years to integrate bamboo into the composites industry are paying off. Susanne Lucas, CEO of the WBO, put forward that “our innovative work with fiber composites is inspiring, uplifting, and as such is symbolic of the strength, flexibility, attitude, and potential bamboo has to offer”.
What is the World Bamboo Organisation (WBO) ?
The World Bamboo Organization is a diverse group consisting of individual people, commercial businesses, non-profit associations, institutions, and allied trade corporations.
This non-governmental and non-profit organisation facilitates the exchange of information from around the world on the environmental, socioeconomic, biological, and cultural aspects of bamboo. By bringing together local and regional bamboo people and creating mechanisms for global communications, the WBO’s goal is to facilitate the development of new partnerships and alliances to advance the causes of bamboo and furthering the efforts of bamboo practitioners worldwide.
A bit of history…
Originally founded as the International Bamboo Association (IBA), the idea for an international coordinating body for bamboo practitioners was born out of discussions at the 1991 International Bamboo Workshop in Chiangmai, Thailand. The following year, the IBA was established during the International Bamboo Congress in Japan.
Through 1998, the IBA had been the coordinating platform for bamboo people around the world, with its primary responsibility being the International Bamboo Congress & International Bamboo Workshop. A union of these two distinct gatherings is today called the World Bamboo Congress, and has lead to the re-birth of the IBA into the World Bamboo Organization. World Bamboo Congresses are now organised every 3 to 4 years.
The founding members of the WBO include :
- Susanne Lucas (USA)
- Ramanuja Rao (India)
- Karina Quintans (USA)
- David Flanagan (USA)
- Carmelita Bersalona (Philippines)
- Amin Samuel Zacca (Ghana)
- Jorge Campos (Chile)
- Victor Brias (Belgium)
Dedicated volunteers administer this organization. An Honorary Council was established in 2005 to support the WBO with professional consultation and expertise, in the field as well as in the conference room. The Honorary Council has evolved and has been re-named to better reflect the horizontal structure of the collaborations in the name of bamboo. They are now collectively called Bamboo Ambassadors.
Cobratex is very happy to join officially the Team of Bamboo Ambassadors and will contribute, as always, to the growth of bamboo.
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