Page 78 - Scientech 2016-17

Organic farming -
The Success Story of Vijnana Bharati:
The need of the hour
The Need Mission

The year 2015 marked a proud moment for Vijnana Bharati a National movement dedicated
to the integrated development of India through the intervention of Science, Engineering and
Technology as it received two awards, the ‘Honorable mention Award’ and ‘Popular choice
Award’ in a recently held ‘Crowds & Climate Conference’ at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), USA.

The conference was organized by the Climate CoLab an MIT initiative focused on different
aspects of the climate change problem (www.climatecolab.org) owing to the United Nations’
climate agreement anticipated to fall short of the 20C carbon emissions target. Climate
CoLab is a growing community of people around the world, who work together online through
a series of interrelated contests focused on global climate change.

Vijnana Bharati participated in one such contest and had submitted a proposal entitled
“National campaign in India aimed to create a network of young Energy Ambassadors”. The
project secured the ‘Popular Choice Award’ of the 71 proposals submitted for the contest,
“Shifting attitudes and behavior”.

In addition, a panel of experts which included Robert Armstrong, Director of the MIT Energy
Initiative; Jason Jay, Director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; John Reilly, Co-
Director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has also bestowed
the prestigious ‘Honorable Mention award’ from the 37 winners of the 15 contests run on
the Climate CoLab.

This has not only added a feather in the achievements of Vijnana Bharati but has also
provided recognition to the efforts made by the team towards climate change. This is for the
first time that a proposal from India has won awards in this conference.

This project proposes a model of creating a network of young Energy Ambassadors
UrjaRakshaks, for energy conservation. Building a new energy conscious generation by
imparting education to school children can prove to be effective for a developing country like
India in the long run is the core idea of the project proposal. The project will be implemented
in a phase-wise manner in the next 10 years. Phase 1 and Phase 2 are already completed in
different parts of India where 2100 Energy Ambassadors are created in phase 1 and 4,800
in phase 2 with total energy saving of around 2,41,500 KWh achieved. In the next phase,
1000 schools across the country are going to be selected and from these schools a total of
1,00,000 Energy Ambassadors will be enrolled based on their skills and interest. These
energy ambassadors will be engaged in various activities such as School Energy Policy,
Product Assembly Training, School & Home Energy Audit, Energy Film Fest, Guest lecturers
& workshops, Field trips, Competitions, National Students Energy Festival and so on…

78 Scientech
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