{"id":541,"date":"2004-04-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/master.k8s.p4.greenpeace.org\/india\/uncategorized\/541\/notes-from-the-solar-generation-diaries\/"},"modified":"2019-11-06T08:46:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T08:46:38","slug":"notes-from-the-solar-generation-diaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/press\/541\/notes-from-the-solar-generation-diaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from the Solar Generation Diaries"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\tDHARAMSALA, India \u2014 On 19th April 2004, a group of seventeen people from Greenpeace Germany, Switzerland and India embarked on a journey to Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, to participate in the first \u2018Solar Generation\u2019 project in India. Together with youngsters from the Tibetan Children\u2019s Village (TCV), Greenpeace installed a 2KW solar generator to provide electricity to a school in Dharamsala. Here are first-hand accounts from some of them.\n<\/div>\n
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\n Notes from the Solar Generation Diaries\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Deb Kumar Chatterjee, New Delhi: My name is Deb and I work with
\nthe Greenpeace Direct Dialogue Team in New Delhi. Last week I had
\nthe privilege of being in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh with an
\ninternational, multi-cultural team working on the Solar
\nGeneration’s first project in India. I’d like to share some of my
\nexperiences from this trip.<\/p>\n

We started our journey from New Delhi at six o’clock in the
\nmorning on 19th April, after an introduction with our international
\nvisitors. 17 people in all left for Dharamsala – though everyone
\nwas in high spirits, we were also keeping to ourselves a little
\nbit, since we were new to each other. But as with all long
\njourneys, by the end of our 14 hour road trip to Dharamsala, we had
\nbefriended the others well enough to be singing songs together in
\nGerman, Hindi and English! By the end of the first day we felt like
\na strong team, and got the feeling that we knew each other
\nwell.<\/p>\n

This long journey made me realize how passionate the German
\nstudents were about our Solar Generation project – it also made me
\nrealize why Greenpeace Germany is considered very strong; they have
\nfound youngsters with the potential to be ‘future leaders’ who can
\nconvey their message to future generations. It was a great learning
\nprocess for me.<\/p>\n

The next morning, it was great to wake up in this beautiful
\nplace at an altitude of 1817 m above sea level – and even better to
\nhave breakfast in the Tibetan Children’s Village canteen, along
\nwith the rest of the German team. We were already beginning to feel
\nlike old friends! The bad news was that three of our German friends
\nhad fallen ill, and needed to rest a little. After breakfast, we
\nwere formally welcomed by the Director of the TCV and introduced to
\nthe 12 Tibetan school students who would be working with us on this
\nproject. Our new Tibetan friends took us on a quick tour of their
\nvillage after which we went for a slightly more formal presentation
\non the TCV. After lunch we heard a presentation about climate
\nchange by Fiona Koza (Greenpeace India Energy Campaign), and
\nanother presentation by Sven Teske (Greenpeace Germany Energy
\nCampaign) about solar conversion devices. One thing amply clear to
\nus by now, is that in the coming years, much of India’s fossil fuel
\nreserves will be gone, and at a great cost to our own future. If we
\nare to have a clean, sustainable future, we must urgently switch to
\nrenewable energy sources.<\/p>\n

Sachin Singh, Mumbai: Hi, I’m Sachin, a Direct Dialogue
\nrecruiter from the Mumbai team. I too had a great time working on
\nthe Dharamsala project, with Greenpeace teams from 3 countries
\nworking with the students of the TCV. It’s great to feel that
\ntogether we are actually doing something to make our planet safer
\nand cleaner.<\/p>\n

As part of our first combined exercises, we brainstormed for
\nhours and came up with the single message we want to put out to the
\nworld through this project – “One Sun, one Earth, one Future, ACT
\nNOW”!<\/p>\n

We painted this message on a huge banner on the third day of our
\ntrip, and apart from the fun we had, and the satisfaction of our
\npositive action, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction in the common
\nhope we all harbour in our hearts – the sense that even though we
\nbelong to different countries and different cultures, and spoke
\ndifferent languages, we are all united in our efforts to save the
\nplanet.<\/p>\n

Judging by our collective enthusiasm, I am convinced that it is
\nwe, the youth who are going to make a difference. And at the end of
\nthis small note, I would like to send a message to India and the
\nwhole world: we must save our planet and we must act now to do
\nso!<\/p>\n

Jan Schlenk, Hannover, Germany:I joined the Greenpeace Germany
\n‘Green Team’ in 1995, and have been a part of Greenpeace projects
\never since. I first came to Dharamsala for a school volunteer
\nproject in 2002, and liked the place so much that I came back three
\nmore times! I brought up the idea of the Solar PV electricity
\nsupply to the TCV school with Greenpeace Germany in October 2002,
\nafter which I discussed it with the Director of the TCV.<\/p>\n

Although it has taken one-and-a-half years for this project to
\nmaterialize, I am happy to see it finally bear fruit. I believe
\nthis project is a wonderful beginning towards educating students
\nabout Renewable Energy sources. I particularly enjoyed the
\nexchanges between the Swiss, German, Indian and Tibetan children,
\nand I do hope that it is only the start of a long relationship!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DHARAMSALA, India \u2014 On 19th April 2004, a group of seventeen people from Greenpeace Germany, Switzerland and India embarked on a journey to Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, to participate in the first \u2018Solar Generation\u2019 project in India. Together with youngsters from the Tibetan Children\u2019s Village (TCV), Greenpeace installed a 2KW solar generator to provide electricity to a school in Dharamsala. Here are first-hand accounts from some of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[25],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clean-energy","tag-renewables","p4-page-type-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4354,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/4354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}