SunRice Cooker: The Trip - Day Three

I have been busy, relaxing in London, where I have been on vacation for the past two weeks. Now that my vacation is over however, I can continue updating the blog!

Early in the morning we set out to our workshop for the day, which was with a women's self help group. The skies were relatively overcast so we were worried that our cookers wouldn't function fully. We arrived at the village and set up the cookers, but the wind was so strong that we could only use the fiberglass one.

There were a little under 100 women, but we couldn't hold the presentation outside because of the wind, so we decided to hold it in groups of around 20 inside one of the houses.

Once our presentations finished, we went outside to conduct the workshops but realized that it was too cloudy for the cookers to actually boil water in a reasonable amount of time. Nonetheless the women embraced the idea, so we left one of our cookers with them to try out the next day.

SunRice Cooker: The Trip - Day Two

We received an invitation from a local mosque to give a presentation of our cookers to the women congregants in the morning. My aunt told me that the local Muslim women were rarely allowed to come to non-religious activities, and that she had not once been allowed to talk to this particular group of women. 

Answering questions about the cooker

After the presentation we held a workshop to show how the cooker worked in real life. The women seemed enthusiastic about using the cooker for their day to day food preparation and asked a lot of questions about the practicalities of our device.

Listening to the women's reactions to our cooker

My aunt later told me that our presentation had been so successful that she had been invite back for a series of followup presentations once I left.

From the left: A local reporter, me, one of the mosque leaders, Dr. Satish

SunRice Cooker: The Trip - Day One

Satish and I arrived at the Rameshwaram Station in Pamban Island, on Friday morning at 4 a.m. (the earliest I’ll get up all summer). We drove back from the train station to my aunt Malli's house, at the central village of Thagachimadam, which means "sister’s place" in the local tongue. We freshened up a bit and got ready for the day ahead of us. 

Making posters for the workshops and presentations

Before I arrived, I had written a bunch of PowerPoints on how the SunRice Cooker worked and we decided to use them during our presentations. Our general formula for each event would be for me to give a presentation about the cooker, with my aunt translating, and then hold a bunch of workshops to let the people see the cookers in action.

The event for the day was at the Yagappa School, a high school that my aunt and I had worked with before on my Laptop Project. We met with the principal at around 9am to go over the details of our day. We were scheduled to speak only with the 10^th graders, and hold two workshops for them. 

Malli and I talking about how the cooker works.

Satish setting up a cooker for a workshop.

Lunchtime was called while we were holding our workshops and the whole school saw our cookers in action. The 9^th grade students were so excited that they requested the principal to let us present for them as well. 

During their lunch period many of the children were excited to get a look at the cookers.

All in all we spoke to at least 500 students, and had left such an impression that some of the 9^th graders decided to use our cooker at the regional science fair.

The principal of the school and I, infront of two 10th grade classes