Janak Palta McGilligan  director of  Jimmy McGilligan Centre for Sustainable Development has been awarded “Solar Cookers International’s Order of Excellence”.  

 

She is the first Woman from India who has received this prestigious Award that was established by Solar Cookers International in 1995, this honor recognizes individuals whose sustained efforts have contributed most to empowering people to cook food and pasteurize water with solar energy.

 

She has been a pioneer who started training of  Solar Cooking  for  grass root  women and along with her husband late Mr James( Jimmy ) McGilligan  OBE , empowered the   tribal girls to use solar cookers and relieved them not only from inhaling toxic smoke from biomass based cooking but they also continue using it for livelihood . They made Solar kitchens and they raised their voices at national and international level.

They made Solar kitchens , transferred solar cookers among hundreds of villages in India and  Janak has been active presenter and leader in the area of Solar Cooking  advocating and promoting by manufacturing, testing and disseminating a variety of technologies to take forward the solar cooking movement in India and all over the World. She has also been  one of the presenters in Solar Cookers International Conferences in Spain, Sacramento, Portugal   and Vadodra. ”Based in her village she has sensitized and educated more than 50 thousand students from many schools, colleges, universities microcredit groups, farmers and she strongly advocates Solar Cooking technologies are one of the ways forward to achieve Sustainable Development Goals”.

She still feels that India has a long way to go and still far behind in use of solar Cooking but Indore has a great potential .Now no I clean city needs to come forward to harness Sun’s clean energy .