Salinee Tavaranan represented BGET, http://www.bget.org/, at the World Energy Globe Awards to receive multiple awards for solar medical clinic projects inside Burma. In addition to receiving the national award for Myanmar, BGET was awarded the international award in the “Fire” category and the overall Grand Prize decided by the audience at the ceremony in Prague, Czech Republic. The Energy Globe Awards competition, http://www.energyglobe.com/news/details/category/2/id/1093/, highlights successful sustainable projects from around the world.
BGET designs simple, rugged, and reliable solar energy systems and empowers Burmese medics through intensive hands-on training to install, operate, and maintain these systems once in site. In addition, BGET has provided solar systems to power larger facilities to train medics and emergency relief workers in public health, first aid, medical and dental care, leadership, conflict resolution, human rights reporting, counseling, and wilderness survival. Over 200,000 internally displaced people now have access to clinics powered by solar electricity; allowing medics to perform nighttime surgeries and childbirth deliveries, charge batteries for communication, refrigerate vaccines, and power microscopes to detect and treat malaria.
BGET relied much on technical guidance and fundraising efforts of Walt Ratterman of SunEnergy Power International, http://www.sunepi.org/SunEPI/Welcome.html, as well as fundraising by Green Empowerment, http://www.greenempowerment.org/, for these projects.
The awards ceremony in its entirety can be viewed at http://www.energyglobe.com/en/energy-globe-award/photo-gallery-video/video/energy-globe-world-award-gala-2009-1/.
by Stony Oswald
