ECO-V joins with Earth Hour Sri Lanka 2012

We had two more international Visitors who admired ECO-V activities living with us for nearly 5 weeks in January and February. After they went back we have our 5th visitor for this year. Jackie Scally who got inspired to volunteer for ECO-V after listening my presentation about Kelani nadee Yathra is with us now. Thanks Jakie for writing our blog. It made my work easy! - Kanchana

Thursday was the official press conference for Earth Hour 2012. The Minister of Environment for the Western Province, Udaya Gammanpila, was in attendance to launch the event. He spoke about the significance of Earth Hour and the importance of taking action to address climate change. Minister Gammanpila was accompanied by other event ambassadors, which even included a Sri Lankan pop singer! Kanchana represented ECO-V on the panel of ambassadors.

Earth Hour 2012 will take place on March 31^st from 8:30 – 9:30pm. The event will be held at the residence of the Sri Lankan President, H.E. Mahinda Rajapakshe. Several of the Kelani Nadee Yatra youth will be attending the event – all of whom are excited to be visiting the President’s house!!

Kanchana, Mandy, Abdul, Bathiya and Minister Gammanpila at press conference

Friday the 17^th, Kanchana and myself attend a presentation by Hon. Patali Champika Ranawaka, Minister of Power & Energy. While the presentation was made in Sinhalese, I managed to grasp a few key points and was thankful that a power point slide accompanied the talk with many diagrams!! Kanchana helped relay some of the main items the Minister discussed. Among them were the importance of moving to renewable energy in the face of rising oil prices as a result of diminishing supply. The Minister said the Sri Lanka is well placed to move more and more to renewables such as wave energy, geothermal and wind. He concluded his presentation with a number of practical tips people can employ at the grassroots level. This presentation will provide a useful resource for ECO-V and in particular will help inform some displays at the Kelani Nadee Yatra exhibition at the end of the month - Jackie Scally from Melbourne, Australia