The United States, Department of State has selected a community service project ‘lighting Up lives’ submitted by Rajesh Majumdar, a Physics teacher in the Doon School here with primary focus of the project being on advanced skill development to equip trainees to build working models for use at home and learn advanced repairing techniques related to lED lights. Society of Pollution and Environmental Conservation Scientists (SPECS) secretary Brij Mohan Sharma informed that this project is under the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF) which provides funding opportunities for community service to those who have been at the United States of America for teacher education programmes.
“Out of a total 829 proposals submitted from 137 countries this year, two have been selected from India with ‘lighting Up lives’ being one of those. The project has received a grant of Rs 16.5 lakh and will start this month continuing till August 2017.
The project will primarily focus on advanced skill development aimed at enabling each trainee with unique set of skills which will impact her/his community. The project will entail five 7-day residential programmes at Kandauli village near Paundha over a period of 10 months. Innovative in the context of its approach, it focuses on ‘education’ on efficient use of energy and then goes on further to address the environmental and climate change concerns by developing skills to repair the damaged lED light units which is the unique selling point of this project as presently there is negligible emphasis on repair of lED lights.
The technology is green, provides opportunity for equal access to energy and also prepares one to acquire advanced skills to support the environment,” said Sharma.
He added that in a fast growing economy like India with 7.5 per cent growth rate, the household energy use will also increase manifold.
“The government-initiated Domestic Efficient lighting Programme (DElP) in India has to overcome the challenge of educating the populace on efficient use of energy which is environment friendly, with minimal impact on climate change and preparing and training for advanced skills to repair and recycle the used lights for sustained development. Majumdar feels that if efficient lED bulbs are used extensively, as it consumes less power, then it will certainly stabilise and reduce carbon emission which is the prime need of the hour not only for the country but for the whole planet,” he said.
The training sessions will educate 150 persons from 75 villages of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telengana, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur. These trained persons will take their expertise to their native villages. With an average population of 1300, these “ambassadors of light” will reach out to approximately 200,000 people in one stage.