Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Sri Lanka's Sun in a Box! - Article
By Vijita Fernando
Freelance Journalist - Sri Lanka
Harnessing the Sun in Sri Lanka
A Sri Lankan Non Governmental Organization (NGO)
has come up with the innovative idea of cooking with sunlight using energy from solar power. The process is simple. It needs a wooden box called a solar box cooker.
This simple contraption is exposed to the sun with uncooked food placed inside it for 2 to 4 hours and the food is ready!
"Cooking food in a box is not an idea that people find easy to accept," says E.M. Abeyratne, Director the NGO, EMACE (Environment and science, Manpower and skills, Adult parenthood assistance, Childcare and women's rights, Education and culture).
The initial stages of the project and the testing took place at Hambantota, a township in the south of the country with plenty of sunlight. Several workshops and demonstrations later, the solar box cooker is now being accepted in many areas.
EMACE helps the most marginalized people in the country with projects in income generation, health care and education. The need to find alternative methods of cooking was linked to health care, science and women. Abeyratne contacted a global company, Solar Cookers International, for information on how the idea of harnessing the sun for cooking could be put into actual practice.
"About the same time, 2 Canadian volunteers, Lee Sentes and Kathleen Manion, had completed a solar cooking project in Madagascar and Solar Cookers International requested them to contact me," says Abeyratne.
The link was made, and in 2000 EMACE began their project in Katubedda, a town about fifteen miles to the south of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
Five models were tested before it was decided that the box was the most suitable for the country's homes. Six skilled staff were trained to produce, manufacture and maintain the box cookers. Workshops were then set up and training was given to villagers from other areas of the country, Anuradhapura in the north central region of the country, Kurunegala and Puttalam on the fringe of the Dry Zone.
Uncooked food, in covered, black-painted aluminum pans, is placed inside the base of the box and allowed to rest on a thin metal sheet balanced on small objects to allow the heat to circulate, thus making the cooking process quite fast.
"There is no big science involved," says Abeyratne, explaining that the box is positioned facing the sun with its reflector lid kept open. Sunlight reflected on the lid falls directly onto a transparent sheet of glass beneath which is located the food in the covered aluminum pots. The well-insulated base containing the trapped hot air begins the cooking at 85?C almost immediately. As long as the lid is kept open, the food stays warm.
"My wife has been using one for about two years and her cooking, especially of fish in the box cooker, is delicious," says an appreciative Abeyratne.
The cooker can be used to cook two meals of rice and curry. The cooker can be used to cook two meals of rice and curry, the Sri Lankan staple food, for a day. It is also capable of turning out pastries and cakes.
"One must remember that there can be no cooking at night, nor when it rains or when the skies are threatening with clouds. The best times are between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a bright sunny day of which we in Sri Lanka have plenty!" says Abeyratne.
www.islamonline.net
Freelance Journalist - Sri Lanka
Harnessing the Sun in Sri Lanka
A Sri Lankan Non Governmental Organization (NGO)
has come up with the innovative idea of cooking with sunlight using energy from solar power. The process is simple. It needs a wooden box called a solar box cooker.
This simple contraption is exposed to the sun with uncooked food placed inside it for 2 to 4 hours and the food is ready!
"Cooking food in a box is not an idea that people find easy to accept," says E.M. Abeyratne, Director the NGO, EMACE (Environment and science, Manpower and skills, Adult parenthood assistance, Childcare and women's rights, Education and culture).
The initial stages of the project and the testing took place at Hambantota, a township in the south of the country with plenty of sunlight. Several workshops and demonstrations later, the solar box cooker is now being accepted in many areas.
EMACE helps the most marginalized people in the country with projects in income generation, health care and education. The need to find alternative methods of cooking was linked to health care, science and women. Abeyratne contacted a global company, Solar Cookers International, for information on how the idea of harnessing the sun for cooking could be put into actual practice.
"About the same time, 2 Canadian volunteers, Lee Sentes and Kathleen Manion, had completed a solar cooking project in Madagascar and Solar Cookers International requested them to contact me," says Abeyratne.
The link was made, and in 2000 EMACE began their project in Katubedda, a town about fifteen miles to the south of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
Five models were tested before it was decided that the box was the most suitable for the country's homes. Six skilled staff were trained to produce, manufacture and maintain the box cookers. Workshops were then set up and training was given to villagers from other areas of the country, Anuradhapura in the north central region of the country, Kurunegala and Puttalam on the fringe of the Dry Zone.
Uncooked food, in covered, black-painted aluminum pans, is placed inside the base of the box and allowed to rest on a thin metal sheet balanced on small objects to allow the heat to circulate, thus making the cooking process quite fast.
"There is no big science involved," says Abeyratne, explaining that the box is positioned facing the sun with its reflector lid kept open. Sunlight reflected on the lid falls directly onto a transparent sheet of glass beneath which is located the food in the covered aluminum pots. The well-insulated base containing the trapped hot air begins the cooking at 85?C almost immediately. As long as the lid is kept open, the food stays warm.
"My wife has been using one for about two years and her cooking, especially of fish in the box cooker, is delicious," says an appreciative Abeyratne.
The cooker can be used to cook two meals of rice and curry. The cooker can be used to cook two meals of rice and curry, the Sri Lankan staple food, for a day. It is also capable of turning out pastries and cakes.
"One must remember that there can be no cooking at night, nor when it rains or when the skies are threatening with clouds. The best times are between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a bright sunny day of which we in Sri Lanka have plenty!" says Abeyratne.
www.islamonline.net