Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise Wins Sankalp – Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Award; Receives Cash Prize of US$ 15,000
Mumbai, April 17, 2013
Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise Wins Sankalp – Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Award; Receives Cash Prize of US$ 15,000
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves partnered with Sankalp Forum to recognize one enterprise for outstanding innovation in clean cook solutions, and be considered for funding through the Spark Fund
Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise, which provides rural women with livelihoods by creating a supply chain dealing in clean energy products, was felicitated by Hon. Minister Social Welfare Department of Bihar Mrs. Parveen Amanullah at the Sankalp Award ceremony on April 17, 2013. The winner was selected by a panel of high profile sector experts. The award is part of the Alliance’s strategic plan to increase the level of resources, grants, and investment in the sector on par with comparable global development challenges.
Jennifer Tweddell, Manager – Carbon Financing, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, said, “Driving investment to support enterprise development is an integral part of the Alliance’s strategy to catalyze the clean cooking sector in India. Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprises has an innovative model to provide clean cookstoves and fuels to rural customers that is well aligned with the Alliance's mission to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women and protect the environment.”
Sakhi was selected from a pool of 3 finalists including Project Dharma and Navdurga Metal Industries. All finalist enterprises in this category are working towards building access to clean cooking solutions among underserved communities in India. Nearly 3 billion people in the developing world cook food and heat their homes with traditional cookstoves or open fires. 4 million premature deaths occur every year due to smoke exposure from these methods.
Aparajita Agrawal, Director – Sankalp Forum says about this new initiative “We’re delighted to be working with the Alliance, and aim to continuously build value propositions for enterprises within our network. We look forward to building our association with the Alliance through deeper engagement with enterprises in this space”
Media Contact:
Charisma Murari, Senior Manager – Marketing Communications
Charisma.murari@intellecap.net
About Sankalp Forum
Sankalp Forum (www.sankalpforum.com), an Intellecap initiative, recognizes & supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. It builds an enabling ecosystem for early-stage businesses, channels impact investments, and engages over 11,000 stakeholders globally through collaborative year-round initiatives. It mobilizes a community of entrepreneurs, investors, enablers and policy-makers to encourage innovation, facilitate scalability, and drive consensus on matters that aid social enterprise development.
Sankalp’s Annual Summit is the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world, and in 2013 it partnered with Unconvention to become the Sankalp Unconvention Summit. The Summit brings together more than 1,000 delegates, thought leaders, industry experts, policy makers from around the world to voice, discuss, debate issues, trends and solutions that aid social enterprise development.
About the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves:
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20 goal calls for 100 million households to adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020. The Alliance is working with its public, private and non-profit partners to help overcome the market barriers that currently impede the production, deployment, and use of clean cookstoves in developing countries. For more information, please visit www.cleancookstoves.org
About Sakhi:
Sakhi Empowers women and the community by providing rural women with livelihood opportunities by creating a supply chain dealing in clean energy products, thereby providing women and the community with an alternate energy means through marketing of socially relevant products at affordable prices – energy efficient smokeless biomass stoves, water purifiers, organic agricultural inputs, solar products etc. that help improve the living conditions of rural households.