My World Environment Day, 2011

A few days late, but here's an overview of what I did last Sunday on World Environment Day here in India. ONergy kicked off a project in partnership with a local Rotary chapter (RC Calcutta Mid-City, District 3291) on an off-grid island in the Sunderbans, which is in East  India. 


The Sundarbans wetlands and mangrove forest is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Evidenced by a devastating cyclone in 2008, it is extremely sensitive to changing weather patterns. Electrification and water purification are critical issues. A majority of the villages are without grid access, using kerosene and diesel generators for lighting, electrification and pumping water for de-salination and agricultural irrigation.  Relying on fossil fuels for these purposes is detrimental to the surrounding environment, unhealthy, and incredibly costly.  

The event was organized and held at the site of a local NGO who works with and runs programs with villagers to promote income generation through skill building and sustainable development. 

A small training and awareness session on the benefits of solar and how to use the lamps was given to a group of school children.

"Who know's how solar works?"

Ekta from ONergy mesmorizing the group with how their
mobile phones can be charged directly from the panel!

Solar LED study lamps were provided to selected students from Classes 5 & 6 who were regular attenders at school and high achievers. 

The first two students chosen, all dressed up, so cute.

A group of students them performed a skit on stage, which was adorable. They were dressed up as elders- wearing grey powder in their hair, traditional dress, and fake beards/moustaches. Though I couldn't understand what they were saying, what I gathered was that it was a generational progress, with the elderly teaching the youth the importance of taking care of the surrounding environment. 

Love the girl in the middle with the straw beard. Some of the kids
twirled their mustaches at the ends - great style.

Students on stage performing a group skit on the importance
of managing the environment.

As always, the teacher was at the side of the stage feeding lines
to the kids who forgot or got temporarily distracted.

This purpose of this pilot was to get the program started in the community, and also for Rotary to gain awareness for the project as they look to secure funding to expand it. The plan is to set up a  "charging station" at the local school and provide subsidized lamps to 50-100 school children. They could then bring their lamps to the school to get charged during the day and be brought home to study with at night, thereby preventing them from having to study beside dim, unhealthy, and unsafe kerosene lamps.


Very entertaining Sunday, although extremely hot with lots of travel involved (trains, buses, ferries), and I suspect the heat played a part in taking me down on Tuesday. All better now though!

Crazy cricket celebrations, sickness, more village visits!

Lots been going on recently:
Went out for a drive to witness the absolutely wild celebration in the streets of Kolkata after India's World Cup win against Sri Lanka. Fireworks that sounded like explosions, jam packed streets, cabs with over 10 people hanging off, motorcars, cars flying around honking, flags waving, hanging out of the sunroof, cheering (didn't bring a camera), but was absolutely amazing to be in the country for.

A few weeks ago we went to one of our centers in a super remote area (took a 2 hour train, 45min rickshaw ride with 10 of us jammed into one, a 20 minute autopan ride, short boat ride across a river, then another 15 minute rickshaw). We stayed at the center which is a local hospital, and trained a group of women from the villages local self-help group how to become microentrepreneurs for ONergy, where they make commissions for selling our products.

We then visited local villages to conduct surveys with customers to get feedback on their experiences with their product so far, while I was in charge of getting photos of people using their product. It was awesome because everyone loved posing for the camera then getting to see the photo, so we were mobbed by groups of kids and got lots of fun shots.

Getting sick in a very rural area- I've narrowed the source to: eating way too much (they served me heaps of food and I felt it was insulting to leave any on my plate), walking around in the sun all day, or drinking untreated well water (I think it was a combination of all three), ended with me puking out the side of a rickshaw on the way to the train station. Not very fun. It took me 6 weeks but I finally managed to get sick here, about time!

Luckily I had a quick recovery which I attribute to coconut water (guy chops off the top of a coconut and hands you a straw to drink the water from inside- magical cure, its a kind of salty water). The next morning I went for a bike ride with the local cycling club to the Japanese embassy to donate as a group. There was a film car following us, we then got interviewed (possible made the news?) and also made the front page of the 'Calcutta Times' the next morning!

Last weekend I had both the first meat AND alcohol I've had in the 6 weeks I've been here, woh! It wasn't for any particular reason, the family I'm living with is vegetarian and I actually haven't missed meat at all because the food here is so tasty with yummy spices.

I'm currently in Bangalore for a conference with fellow Artemisia interns working for social business in India. We're hear to brainstorm, share ideas, and discuss the social business space. It's the end of day 2, lots of great ideas being thrown around so many thoughts running through my head!

I'll likely be posting quite a bit on the topic of social business in the next few months, as its the industry I've jumped into here, very exiting and so many innovative ideas and companies happening. It's been inspiring hearing about all the ventures fellow interns are working for here in India and the amazing technologies and business models they've developed. Social business- people and profits! woo, cool stuff.

Music Monday - Attending a ceremony in a remote island village

This weeks music selection is from Radical Face, a band from Portland, Oregon. Heard of these guys from an Oregonian by the name of Max who I worked with on the vineyard in New Zealand last year and also lived with us in our awesome community backpacker flat. I loved listening to music all day at work, it made some of the tedious hours fly by, and the best part was switching ipods and hearing others' music recommendations.

Last week I got to go to an inauguration ceremony for a solar mini-grid village electrification project set up by an Australian company and sponsored by WWF India and the Australian government. It was a full day trip, requiring a 3 hour bus ride from Kolkata followed by a 3 hour boat ride to a remote village in the Sunderbans. The Sunderbans is a National Park in eastern India that consists of a massive land mass of wetlands that empty out into the Bay of Bengal in the Indian ocean. There were heaps of Mangrove trees which have breathing roots and grow in salt water, pretty neat. There is also a tiger reserve that's a main tourist attraction for the area that we went by, however did see some species of monkey chilling on a concrete post on the way back at night and I SWEAR I saw a light flash up near his mouth as if he was smoking a cigarette, then he jumped down and walked away. Of course no one else believed me.

All around awesome trip, got to meet people from various organizations all working on interesting projects. There was a long lineup of school kids to greet the arrival of our boats, as well as a cool group of drummers and dancers that led the procession. We walked about a kilometer to the site of the mini-grid setup for the ribbon cutting ceremony, got to check out the system and panel setup as well as a few huts to see the lights in action. Following that was an official ceremony under a tent attended by the community and a lovely return boat trip backdropped by a lovely sunset.

Tomorrow is TED Talk Tuesday, which will be a video that argues for a solution opposite of that suggested by Bill Gates on his recent Ted (which I posted last week). 

A few days in a rural village

I haven't posted all week so this will be a big one about my trip to one of our field projects earlier this week. A day after starting work this past Monday I got to go check out one of our renewable energy centers in the field for a few days - sweet gig!

Autopan

The 2 hour train ride north was a journey in itself, quickly filling up to certain overcapacity, with people jammed in every available crevice and vendors selling food, tobacco, and other products from baskets still managing to squeeze their way through somehow. Jumping on a pan, (like a rickshaw but with a flatbed for people to sit on the back), we motored along a country road to get to the small village of Ullon.

Site 25 years ago vs. today (below)

       

               VSSU main office      

The founder of VSSU started 20 years ago with an amazing vision and lofty ambitions that he has been quite successful in achieving so far, with many development goals still to go. A microfinance institution, library, orphanage, education and community center, and microentrepreneur training institution have all been established. I spent a few nights at the main site that houses the many interns they receive from all over the world. The few kilometer walk from our office to the VSSU building provided me with sites of: mud huts with straw roofs, rice husks drying on mats laid out in the sun, cyclists and school kids, cows, goats, and dogs.

Although it felt way out in the middle of no where, it is wired with electricity and I heard various TV sets playing inside houses as well as spotting a cell tower. India has some of the cheapest mobile rates in the world (like a 2gb smart phone data plan for $2 per month) and excellent network coverage.

Using multimeter to measure panel and battery performance

VSSU also just this month received special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council which sounds pretty impressive and hopefully will help them continue to grow. Speaking with the founder he mentioned how frustrating the last few years have been, as the government stepped him to prevent him from raising funds from the community which he had been doing to support the various project claiming that only financial institutions are allowed to raise funds.  This seems so counter-intuitive, for a government that can't provide electrification for 2/3 of the population (800 million), shouldn't they be encouraging communities to be self-sustainable, building programs such as this on their own? With populations increasing and resources declining, you wonder how much longer countries like Canada or Sweden can rely on their governments to provide such extensive social programs. I still definitely have liberal views in this regard, but I think more and more communities will have to become more
close-knit and their members start relying on eachother
for these sorts of things.

Small panel setup on the roof for testing

Anyways, so my time there was eventful and informative. I got a sense of their operations and how they're trying to build up a local network with each renewable energy center. They're still a new venture and this center, being the first one established, just celebrated its first year of operation. It was cool to check out their product range and see the testing setup on the roof.
  

                                  

                        Chilling on the roof- playground and orphanage below

 I wandered around snapping shots, with tons of kids getting super excited to see me and running over to ask my name and where I'm from.

School bus

New friends!

plenty of room!

We waited until nightfall to test out a few new lights then after initially getting on a train going in the wrong direction, caught the right one back to Kolkata. Finished reading Shantaram, which is a bohemeth of a novel but incredible - gripping adventure combined with words of wisdom and philosophical thought. Now reading the Dharma Bums. I'll post another update in the next few days on general life in Kolkata so far.

My flickr album is linked on the right side of this page, which has a bunch more photos, or view a slideshow: REC Trip.