SKG Sangha - Uses Award for Training and Education

The Sustainable Energy Futures on-line case study competition resulted in a $5000 cash prize to SKG SANGHA in India for their innovative program using agricultural waste for biomass and biogas production.

Mr. Sagar writes the following:
"If we use this money for our projects, your contribution will not be reflected anywhere. Whereas, you are giving us this money as a token of appreciation which we want to be in a memorable shape. Hence, we shall use the money as part finance for our proposed training centre planned to train our beneficiaries, staff, students etc. We shall write your name as part funders for this training centre by that the contribution given by you will be visible for the years to come.

As part of our work we have to train each and every beneficiary on the running, maintenance of our units provided to the beneficiaries. We also can use the same facility to train the students who are coming to us for training from various Indian and foreign Universities as part of their Engineering/agricultural/social work. We also can use this facility for training our staff as well as staff from Government or other Institutions. The estimation for the training centre is about $40000. Last year we received £10,000 as prize money from Ashden Awards, London.
We have kept aside this amount also for our training centre. Now we have some Engineering Students from France who have come for practical training as part of their engineering course. Tomorrow we are getting two more students for training from France who are studying Agricultural Engineering. This training centre will help students from many countries apart from India. So, far the major beneficiaries are students from France. I believe education is the major tool for achieving socio-economic growth and to instill peace all over the world. I appreciate your support to a great cause."

Thanks to Mr Sagar for pointing out the importance of training and education in creating successful social enterprises.
Our case study was a good exercise in determining whether an on-line process of voting works - based on this thoughtful letter - I would say the process yielded a true winner.

...And The Winner is .....

Our casestudy competition came to an end Sunday with the winner being SKG - India - Biomass & Biogas -Mothers and daughters making income from selling fertilizer and making electricity.

Many who voted cited this case's ability to also address local sustainable agriculture- which given the recent global food shortages is becoming critically important.With our first event over and our group reaching the facebook imposed cut off limit of 1200 members we will be launching some new initiatives from the facebook fan page:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bordeaux-Energy-Colloquium/8141228466 Two new initiatives we will start:
ANGEL INVESTING: Competition for groups looking for start-up funding for sustainable energy technologies
ACADEMIC GRANTS: Student research grants for projects studying sustainablity.Hope we can continue to build and reinforce this sustainable community we have created.