Trip Participants: Students: Michael Whitaker, Mark Pitterle, Faculty: Dr. Anu Ramaswami

1. Going PLACES (Participatory Learning And Creative Education in Sustainability):Our Trip to India, Summer 2004 Trip Participants: Students: Michael Whitaker, Mark Pitterle, Faculty: Dr. Anu Ramaswami Professional Engineer: Tim Olsen

2. Who are we? • A group of CU Denver students, faculty, and professional engineers who will develop, innovate, and implement a sustainable energy system for a tribal village in the valley of the river Narmada in India. • This work is being done in close partnership with the villagers, NGOs, Indian universities, students, and faculty.

3. Our Group Photo

4. Trip Goals • Establish working relationships with partners • Learn about tribal village culture and daily lifestyle • Discover self-identified needs of the villagers • Engage in participatory planning • Establish availability of local materials • Lean about locally available appropriate technologies • Establish local environmental constraints • Gather site assessment data • Anemometer setup, indoor air quality data, and site mapping

5. Working with Indian Partners: A Privilege To Know Them • Grass-roots NGOs, fully committed to living with and working for the people • Dedicated to upholding Gandhian principles • Non-violence, simple living, compassion, moral rearmament for self knowledge and peaceful activism, secularism • High degree of environmental consciousness and activism on social justice and equity issues • Practically innovative • R&D focuses on real identified needs with local materials • Skilled in facilitating community participation and involvement

6. Participatory Planning Meeting Swati (seated) and Ishwar (foreground)

7. Another Community Meeting (L to R): Michael, Mark, Tim, Anu in foreground

8. Impressions of the Villagers • Passionately democratic • Women and men participated in community decision making • Incredibly knowledgeable about available technologies • Addressed practicality in all decision-making • Achieved complete consensus • Every voice and point of view was heard • “Barober” – OK I see your point of view as valid • Incredibly sharp • Savvy with money, but not used in internal transactions

9. Living with the Forest

10. Tribal Home Construction

11. Tilling the Field

12. View of Farmlands and Watershed Management Anu in distance walking on a bund

13. Grain Storage

14. Grain Grinding

15. Measuring indoor air quality near teak wood stoves

16. Want to Celebrate?!Liquor Anyone?!

17. Close up of the distillery

18. Would you leave this beautiful land?

19. To live here?

21. The power of the river in the monsoon: bridge washout

22. Trishul Crossing: The inaccessible village

23. Would you cross this?

24. Harnessing the power of the river sustainably: Bilgaon Micro-hydel

25. Micro-hydel Turbine

26. Hugh Piggott’s homemade windmill Mark training in windmill construction Testing completed windmill

27. Michael and Jayanti installing the anemometer

28. Ajay’s biogas plant

29. Solar collectors/cookers PRINCE, 2004

30. TERI’s Research Center Briquetting with waste materials

31. ARTI – Forming Partnerships Dr. Karve, founder of ARTI, discusses the briquette cook stove

32. Overall impressions of renewable energy policy in India • Government is actively analyzing renewable energy technologies for country-wide development • Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES) • Government playing a crucial role in renewable energy development • Subsidies and infrastructure development common • Government struggling with implementation due to corruption and sheer magnitude of the population

33. Overall impressions of India • Hands-on practical approaches to solve the nation’s problems • A very close connection between industry, research, and the university system • A very strong sense of brotherhood and unity • NGOs and activists working closely with communities • All this despite having great diversity in languages, cultures, and religions between sub-regions • There are over 15 official languages and numerous dialects in India • Poverty is not as predominant as one would think • People are happy with their lives….always smiling • People predominantly have food, clothing, and sheltar • What is lacking is infrastructure, particularly electricity grid, water/wastewater treatment, and waste/pollution management • Amazing markets: a true free market experience

34. Animals rule the streets

35. City traffic crossing: A near death experience

36. The mighty, mighty Ganga

37. Gangotri trek to the Himalayas

38. Cultural exchange: frisbee in the villages…

39. Religious DiversityHindu, Buddhist, and Jain caves at Ellora

40. Eating food at the Dhaba (road side restaurant)

41. Thanks to Michael and Ajay!!!Our hosts and advisors on appropriate technology in India Ajay Michael

42. Our Invaluable Partners: AID and PRINCE • AID - Association for India’s Development Mission: • Learning humility, purity and simple living from those who don’t take too much from the earth • Targeting the problems of hunger, disease and oppression that sadden their lives • Inspiring in each other, trust, confidence and support for one and another • PRINCE – Promoters & Researchers In Non Conventional Energy Mission: • To focus on facilitating all sustainable technologies, specializing in solar energy, biogas, vermicomposting, tree planting and energy conservation. • To design, manufacture, and test sustainable technologies. • To make these technologies affordable and accessible to people of all economic levels. • To provide free training, consultation, and education to all social organizations for the use of non-conventional energy