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Follow on Google News | Sierra Club Announces“Green Energy&Green Livelihoods Achievement Award” Winners in India for 09About The Sierra Club Established in 1892 by John Muir – a Scottish-born inventor, writer and conservationist, the Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental, organization in the US
By: mmotifpr Two organizations share the award this year. Ecosphere Spiti, from mountainous Himachal Pradesh, has successfully created sustainable livelihoods linked to conservation and ecotourism. And the Barefoot College in Rajasthan, led by social entrepreneur Bunker Roy, has applied practical, traditional knowledge and community-owned sustainable technology to reach the poorest residents of the impoverished desert state. Each award comes with a Rs. 20 lakh gift and a trophy to be presented during a ceremony in Mumbai on July 30th. Praising Ecosphere Spiti, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said, “We set out on this path more than a century ago by promoting conservation awareness through mountain outings in the United States. We are delighted to recognize Ecosphere Spiti because it so clearly shares our own ideals for protecting a nation’s cultural and natural heritage for future generations.” The 117-year-old Sierra Club, best known for its dual focus of outdoor adventure and civic engagement, also announced a unique association with the legendary Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) based in Gujarat. Both organizations are democratically structured, serve large grassroots memberships and focus on public education. The groups will explore SEWA’s social and economic development programs as an avenue for informing Americans about the challenges associated with climate change adaptation in India. SEWA will receive a Rs. 10 lakh gift from the Sierra Club for its celebrated service to its network of underprivileged working women. "It is a great honor for Ecosphere to be the joint recipient of the Sierra Award alongside the likes of Barefoot College,” said Ishita Khanna, President, Ecosphere Spiti. “We are extremely thrilled and pleased since this is the first time the Sierra Club has instituted an award of this nature in India. It really motivates us to try and attempt to emulate what the Sierra Club has successfully achieved over more than a 100 years. It will indeed be a long journey; however, it is highly inspiring for us to learn that the Sierra Club sees the seeds of their own beginnings in Ecosphere." Sierra Club International Programs director Stephen Mills had equally effusive praise for the Barefoot College. “As much as we are interested in sharing resources and supporting environmental leadership in India we have also come to listen and learn,” Mills said. “We believe that much of the important energy and environmental work happening now in India has exciting applications in the U.S. Bunker Roy’s amazing record of teaching a community’s most disadvantaged members to become solar engineers is a prime example. We are not the first, and we will not be the last to recognize this astonishingly scalable and replicable model for creating green livelihoods.” “We are delighted, honored and humbled by this award,” said Bunker Roy. “The recognition is to Mahatma Gandhi, ‘The Last Man’ who has shown the simple way of how to respect the Earth.” “It seems fitting that one of the Sierra Club’s first steps in India is to recognize a group that reminds us of our own beginnings and coincidentally my birthplace,” The Sierra Club’s Carl Pope recognized several Sierra Club supporters as most responsible for leading the organization’ “Without a doubt, this timely new program would never have come about were it not for the tireless efforts in of Sunil Deshmukh, Sadhana Shenoy, Pritpal Singh Kochhar, Sanjay Ranchod, Dr. Mohan Durve, Anil Deshpande, our friends at the American India Foundation, and my wife Shahnaz, a Mumbaiker herself. Volunteers are the backbone of the Sierra Club,” Pope continued. “In this case they were also the brains, the feet, the arms, the legs, and the heart.” “For more than 100 years the members of the Sierra Club have harnessed public demand for conservation and for reducing natural resource consumption in the United States. But neither America nor India can win the battle against climate change alone,” said Sadhana Shenoy of Portland, Oregon and a founding member of the Sierra Club’s India Advisory Council. “We must share resources and do this together.” “I joined the Sierra Club because they are advocating so vociferously for U.S. emissions reductions, for global agreements that address climate equity or for increased international funding for climate adaptation and mitigation,” A ceremony for the award winners will be held at the Ravindra Natya Mandir auditorium in Mumbai on Thursday, July 30th. The Chief Guest will be Dr. B.L. Mungekar, a member of the Planning Commission of the Government of India. CNN/IBN Environmental Editor Bahar Dutt will be the guest emcee. The event is open to the public. Contact in India: mmotifpr: Eddna Samuel, +91 98.9245.2424, 9833229989, 9322952424 mmotifpr@yahoo.co.in For more information about the Sierra Club’s India program, please visit www.sierraclub.org/ For more information on the Green Energy & Green Livelihoods Achievement Award winners please visit: Ecosphere Spiti, www.spitiecosphere.com Barefoot College, www.barefootcollege.org SEWA, www.sewa.org End
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