Demand Clean Tech

India Today (April 23, 07) has outlined 25 things Indians can do about global warming - 2 I like:
1)Just as in HIV/AIDS, for which nations agreed to drop prices of drugs to suit every pocket, get the governement to persist on developed countries to sell clean technology to developing nations cheap - specificall India - so that we can cut down on emissions...
2)Rationalise price of electricity - with electricity being supplied for free in many states in rural areas, no-one really bothers to istall energy efficient pumpsets.Or for that matter to put off the switches when not using them....So haul up politicialns for indulging in populism and educate villagers on the virtues of paid power.

2007 Stockholm Water Prize for Stanford Professor

The 2007 World Water Week is scheduled at the Stockholm City Conference Centre between 12 and 18 August 2007. Information on the 2007 World Water Week is available at http://www.worldwaterweek.org.

Professor Perry L. McCarty from Stanford University, California, a pioneer in the development of the understanding of biological and chemical processes for the safe supply and treatment of water, has been named the 2007 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.

More information on this is available at http://www.sustdev.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1762.

This might specifically be of interest to Netika.

Shashank

Handhelds for Health web-site is up

The web-site of Handhelds for Health is now up. Please visit http://handheldsforhealth.org for further information on our project on Disease Surveillance. We shall keep it regularly updated to reflect the progress we make.

Shashank, Isha

Bunker Roy's Barefoot College

I would like to invite you to visit the web-site of the Barefoot College, founded by Sanjit "Bunker" Roy in 1972.

Bunker Roy, IMHO, is one of the original band of social entrepreneurs who started out
well before it became fashionable to run an NGO and certainly well before this terminology
was coined. He happens to be one of the most highly decorated social activists around.

I reproduce below an extract from the Barefoot College web-site:

"The Barefoot College is a place of learning and unlearning. It's a place where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher. It's a place where NO degrees and certificates are given because in development there are no experts-only resource persons. It's a place where people are encouraged to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment. It's a place where all are treated as equals and there is no hierarchy."

His single-minded focus, honesty of purpose, deep personal sacrifice, and emphasis on transparency are all highly commendable and worthy of emulation. He has been able to build and nurture a sustainable organisation by involving the very people whom he has targeted, in the formation of the enterprise.

It would have been great if we could somehow have Bunker Roy over for a seminar at RDVP. Some other time, some other place, maybe we will.

Cheers,
Shashank

"Language, Literacy and Sacred Cows: Using Multimedia to Radically Change How we Educate and Communicate" - Neerja Raman - presented at the annual conference in Monterey on "Emerging Technologies in Teaching Language and Culture"
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dctdknj9_0c4t8mw

Our own Ken Banks, fellow DVFer and the face of Kiwanja is featured on World Summit on the Information Society website: Story of the month for April 2007: FrontlineSMS
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/wsis-themes/ict_stories/

India Science & Technology news

Netika - check out the story on Nanotechnology for pure water developed by IIT-Chennai
Indusscitech

CASEconnection Knowledge Newsletter - February 2007

An update from CASE
CASEconnection Knowledge Newsletter - February 2007

3rd Global Knowledge Conference

just came across this great conference on youth social entrepreneurs
3rd Global Knowledge Conference

A field trip to Bangalore in the Spring Break

Isha and Shashank went on a short field trip to Bangalore during the Spring Break at Stanford.

They visited a small village called Huskur on the outskirts of Bangalore and met a government health-care worker to gain first-hand understanding of how the health-care delivery mechanism works in the rural areas. This would help them to refine their project specifications.

Eric Brewer has a cheap and convenient answer for connecting the world's poorest villages
60-Mile Wi-Fi - Forbes.com

Business in Development Network
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BAY AREA / Stanford, UC tackling global poverty issues / Schools join trend by creating centers to study inequality