A persistent myth is that the poor cannot afford the best technology, nor are they able to maintain and use it productively. In India, where nearly half of all households do not have electricity, this myth has stood in the way of spreading solar technology and its benefits—cost-efficiency, clean energy, mitigation of climate change, and improvements in the quality of life and livelihood among the poor.

HARISH HANDE, a young engineer from Bangalore, is disproving this myth. Trained in energy engineering, with a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, he could have chosen an easier career path, but he did not. While a graduate student in the U.S., a visit to the Dominican Republic inspired him with the idea that a decentralized approach in the spread of solar application—using small-scale, stand-alone installations instead of large, centralized thermal stations—is best for reaching poor, remote villages where the technology is most needed. Returning to India, he decided to live with villagers to understand their situation first-hand. This convinced him that, in diffusing a technology, it is not just the product that matters but also the social realities that technology seeks to change.

Putting this belief into practice, he established Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO) India in Bangalore in 1995. SELCO’s principal product offerings were solar PV lighting systems, water heating systems, and cooking stoves to meet the needs of the rural poor. After five difficult years of operation, the company started to net a profit. When it did, pressure from investors forced the company—against HANDE’s wishes—to expand through a franchised dealer network. The ill-considered expansion, combined with rising world prices in solar gear, seriously hurt the company’s finances and diverted it from its social mission of helping the poor. It was a painful but invaluable lesson for HANDE. Facing collapse, he repositioned the company, separated from his business partners and—with the help of the International Finance Corporation and new, socially-minded investors—restructured the company and refocused on its social mission. While SELCO remained a for-profit business, it strengthened its purpose as a social enterprise, measuring performance by how it creates social capital instead of simple financial profit.

SELCO has since demonstrated that indeed the poor can afford sustainable technologies and maintain them, and that social ventures can be run as successful commercial entities. SELCO adopts a triple strategy for reaching the poor, a strategy of “customized products,” “doorstep financing,” and “doorstep service.” It designs and installs solar technology applications based on each customer’s specific needs, whether a two- or four-light system for the home, head lamps for night workers like midwives and rose pickers, or electricity for sewing machines. To enable the poor to access the technology, SELCO has pioneered in linking the sale of solar technologies with credit institutions like rural banks, cooperatives, even self-help groups. Taking service to the “doorstep,” it trains customers in maintenance and provides prompt, personalized help through its wide network of service centers. SELCO is more than just a technology provider. By treating the poor as partners instead of mere consumers, SELCO builds their confidence as it assists them in accessing and using technology to better their lives. Poverty reduction is central to its goal. HANDE says, “Until the poor become asset creators, we are not empowering them.”

To date, SELCO has reached more than half a million people by installing solar lights in 120,000 households, microenterprises, and community facilities. Already one of the world’s largest solar technology providers to the poor, SELCO still has a huge market before it. But HANDE has learned his lessons well: he will not sacrifice the development process for numbers, or his social mission for rates of return. Modest and unassuming but intensely determined about his work, HANDE says: “India has a fantastic opportunity to solve two huge problems—reduce poverty and combat climate change. This is India’s chance to combine and address both issues in a holistic way.”

In electing HARISH HANDE to receive the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his passionate and pragmatic efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, through a social enterprise that brings customized, affordable, and sustainable electricity to India’s vast rural populace, encouraging the poor to become asset creators.

It is an honor to receive this prestigious award, named after one of the great visionary leaders of the world. It is very humbling to follow the footsteps of social stalwarts like Ela Bhatt, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Vinoba Bhave and many more. I have grown up reading about these luminaries and have been inspired by their work and sacrifice.

The citation of the Award has emphasized on three very important aspects—social enterprise, sustainable energy and asset creators. These three words epitomize the foundation for a world that is caring, peaceful and equitable.

These are times where material growth has taken precedence over the environment, social well-being and equity. The very foundation of society has become unsustainable. Now the time has come for all stakeholders to inspire and help grow social enterprises which can balance social, environmental and financial sustainability. Social enterprises will help negate the increasing divide between the rich and poor by making the poor asset creators and employers. The increased sense of equality will help create very stable social structures, leading to a much-longed peaceful world.

We, at SELCO, believe that one of the ways to achieve the goal of equity is via the path of renewable energy. And more so, the powerful linkage between poverty alleviation and decentralized renewable energy automatically provides solutions to the ever-growing problems of global warning and climate change—the brunt of which is mostly borne by the poor.

The Award belongs to the employees of SELCO, their families and its many partners who have tirelessly strived in trying to alleviate poverty by making affordable energy accessible to the poor. Today, when more than three billion people rely on no or unreliable energy services and that too from harmful fossil-based fuels like kerosene, this Award comes at a very critical time. The UN Foundation has declared 2012 as the year for Sustainable Energy For All, thus this immense recognition from the Magsaysay Award Foundation will further give impetus to the cause.

It is a land of familiar ironies and contrasts. An archipelago of astounding natural wealth and one of the world’s fastest-rising economies, Indonesia is also a country where the environment is threatened and poverty is widespread. The government is aggressively expanding power generation capacity to feed the economy but 90 percent of installed capacity still depends on ‘dirty’ fossil fuels and, even then, over a hundred million Indonesians, or half the nation’s population, are without electricity.

It is both a daunting problem and an exciting possibility—turning Indonesia’s vast reserves of sustainable energy into power, and at the same time releasing the dormant economic power of its rural population. This is the challenge that drives the life of TRI MUMPUNI.

Born in Semarang, Central Java—her father an economist, her mother a social worker—MUMPUNI developed a social conscience early in life, and, after earning a degree in social economics, immersed herself in rural development work. A turning point came in 1980 when she married Iskandar Kuntoadji, an engineer who in 1979 helped form Yayasan Mandiri, the first Indonesian nongovernment organization to promote hydropower technology for community development. Though the group was short-lived, Kuntoadji built considerable knowledge in hydropower technology. With his technical expertise and MUMPUNI’s social development commitment and entrepreneurial abilities, in 1993 the young couple formed People-Centered Business and Economic Institute, with the Indonesian acronym IBEKA, short for Institut Bisnis dan Ekonomi Kerakyatan. As a nongovernment organization, IBEKA committed itself to developing micro hydropower systems for impoverished rural communities.

This proved to be a daunting undertaking. As IBEKA’s leader, MUMPUNI had to struggle with restrictive state regulations, complex financing requirements, and the draining demands of social mobilization work. To meet the twin challenges of a social enterprise—remaining viable as a business without compromising its social mission—she had to focus all her energies on working at the level of the poorest communities, as well as with the highest government authorities. Operating deeply in the country’s remote regions had its grave dangers: in Aceh in 2008, MUMPUNI and her husband were kidnapped by former rebels, brought into the jungle, and forced to raise money from family and friends to ransom their freedom.

Skill, creativity, and determination, however, have turned IBEKA into an outstanding Indonesian example of social entrepreneurship, and cast MUMPUNI as a much-admired and influential leader in the field of community-based renewable energy. From its base in Subang, West Java, IBEKA has built sixty micro hydropower plants, with capacities ranging from 5 kilowatts to 250 kilowatts, providing electricity to half a million people in rural Indonesia. Equally important, it has done this through a community-based development approach that goes beyond the technology to the socioeconomic empowerment of communities. Putting a premium on community participation and ownership, IBEKA organizes electric cooperatives, trains villagers in technical management and resource conservation, and provides support in fund-facilitation and income-generating activities.

MUMPUNI works at the national level in promoting the role of hydropower in development, and in designing and implementing new models of government-business-community joint ventures in micro hydropower facilities. Boldly enterprising, she has effectively lobbied for changes in state policy that now allow independent micro hydropower plants to sell electricity to the government’s national grid. Despite what IBEKA has already accomplished, MUMPUNI knows that the task ahead remains formidable: there are still some twenty thousand villages without any electricity. But this is not just about technology and numbers. She says, “Electricity is not our main goal, but the potential to build villages that are economically empowered. This is my highest task.”

In electing TRI MUMPUNI to receive the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her determined and collaborative efforts to promote micro hydropower technology, catalyze needed policy changes, and ensure full community participation, in bringing electricity and the fruits of development to the rural areas of Indonesia.

I believe that poverty is not the problem of development; poverty is a symptom of the larger problem of local communities who are disconnected from the local resources surrounding them, that can contribute to their human well-being. We are now living in a world of great disconnectedness: this is apparent at so many different levels. Many people, especially the poor, carry a sense of inadequacy from being part of a system that sees them not for what they are, but as numbers and elements of some statistical ledger.

IBEKA was founded by my husband and I in the 1990s, to unify what was even then breaking apart and disconnected; IBEKA sought to change this by sharing the world the way it is meant to be shared. Community has to be reconnected to their local resources, and the technology used has to be brought closer to the community. Thus the idea of “Community-Based Electrical Power Supply” was born. I thank my dear husband Iskandar for pioneering the concept and serving as my inspiration. Also for the many sacrifices he has made over the years, in ensuring that our vision of personal happiness is continually augmented by our caring for others! He has always been by my side, showing that a deep spirit of love binds us in this magnificent enterprise of life.

I assert that, contrary to general belief, we live in a generous world of great abundance: alongside this belief is my conviction that eradicating poverty succeeds only if this natural abundance is shared, nurtured, and guarded. Furthermore, natural wealth is to be shared at the grassroots level; wealth cannot be created or sustained by “top-down” approaches. Through the construction of micro-hydro generation plants in isolated communities previously without electricity, IBEKA has shown that our approach can succeed. Now, we would like to broaden our approach by using other technologies that will allow for increased economic impact but still in a sustainable way.

IBEKA and our community partners are propagators of sound eco-management. We are also guardians. IBEKA seeks to ensure that every investment made will create tangible welfare at the community level: every rupiah we spend must be put to good use. That is why we create community institutions that assume responsibility for operation and maintenance of facilities, as well as ultimate ownership.

Economic productivity is the outcome of such community-driven designs. IBEKA offers different micro hydropower models: one is an isolated power-grid operated and maintained by the community for their community’s own electrification; the other model is where redundant energy can be sold back to the grid. Income generated from such sale is put to collective use for village development purposes, such as giving scholarships to poor families. The great beauty of both approaches is that the entire structure is consensus-based, not imposed from the outside!

I am deeply honored to be part of a lineage of Ramon Magsaysay award recipients that include people like Mother Theresa and Muhammad Yunus: champions of the frail and poor, They and other Magsaysay awardees have always intuitively understood that in order for us all to be happy, we need to bring together disparate pieces into a whole: they are holistic thinkers with a deep respect for the community, and for the individuals that make up these pockets of living cultures.

I would like to end with a warm thank-you to all my colleagues at IBEKA, without whose passion and commitment I would not be standing here today: so this award honors you, too, dear fellow travelers on this path of unification!

My deepest thank you to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for honoring us with this great prize: it is my heart-felt wish that all 1.8 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region will share equitably and fairly in our wonderful natural resources, and that all people everywhere have access to basic energy in the form of electricity at a fair and affordable price! My final wish is that we all become good stewards of our responsibilities, and inspire others to share all the good things of this world!

Geothermal power is the largest source of economically and technically feasible energy now available in our planet. It derives from the molten mass filling the inner core of the earth, over which the surface on which we live forms a relatively thin crust. Problems with geothermal energy are that technology for its use is new and little known, and it is accessible only in the earth’s “hot spots.” With these the Philippine archipelago is well endowed, located as it is on the “Pacific Ring of Fire.” When accurately understood and wisely used this immense arc of tectonic and volcanic activity that girdles the Pacific Ocean, previously only feared for its earthquakes and eruptions, can become a major benefactor. 

The use of geothermal heat is not new. Both Norse Vikings who settled Iceland more than 1,000 years ago and American Indians used geothermal geysers for cooking and baking. Maoris, who settled New Zealand some 600 years ago, grew their sweet potatoes in geothermally heated gardens. 

The first industrial harnessing of steam from the earth began in northern Italy more than half a century ago, but the largest geothermal installation today is at The Geysers in California where dry steam readily lends itself to conventional generating, providing more than enough electric power for the city of San Francisco. However most of the geothermal energy available in the Philippines and elsewhere is wet steam?70 percent of production from a well may be hot water?and this demands a different and more difficult technology. 

ARTURO PINEDA ALCARAZ was born in Manila in 1916 and grew up in Baguio where his father was city auditor during the gold mining boom. After studying a year at the University of the Philippines, ALCARAZ transferred to Mapua Institute of Technology when it offered the first degree in mining engineering. He earned a masters degree in geology at the University of Wisconsin and returned home in 1941 to be assigned by the Bureau of Mines to the island of Busuanga. Next posted to the Weather Bureau, its director, Maximo Lachica, introduced him to the science of seismology. 

In 1952 the Philippine Congress responded to the destructive eruptions of Mount Hibok-Hibok on Camiguin Island by creating the Commission on Volcanology. Assigned as Chief Volcanologist, ALCARAZ began to pursue more fully the study of volcanos in order to improve eruption warning and assess possibilities for use of stored heat beneath them. 

The first electric bulb in the Philippines lit by earth-heat energy was in Tiwi, Albay, on April 12, 1967. Three years later President Ferdinand Marcos set apart two geothermal reservations to be administered by the National Power Corporation (NPC), to which ALCARAZ transferred in 1974 as Chief of the Geothermal Division. The NPC, in cooperation with Philippine Geothermal, Inc., a subsidiary of Union Oil Company of California, has since brought on stream 550 megawatts of power at Tiwi and at Mac-Ban near Los Banos, making the Philippines the largest producer of geothermal electric energy from wet steam in the world. Meanwhile major geothermal energy fields in Leyte and Negros are under development by the Philippine National Oil Company Energy Development Corporation, with the cooperation of New Zealand and specialists from elsewhere. Present production is scheduled to be multiplied six times in the next seven years, thus further cutting down on oil imports. 

The Philippines may have a potential to generate 200,000 megawatts of geothermal electric power — about 40 times present total power production — at a competitive capital cost. Added to electricity from this energy source are possibilities for refrigeration, drying and salt making. 

Retired in March 1981 at age 65, ALCARAZ continues as a consultant to the Philippine National Oil Company, seeing to the training in tapping earth energy of a new generation of Filipino technicians — in New Zealand, Japan, the United States and Iceland. 

In electing ARTURO PINEDA ALCARAZ to receive the 1982 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his scientific perspicacity and selfless perseverance in guiding Filipinos to understand and use one of their greatest natural resources.

Once in everyone?s lifetime, I suppose, there comes a moment of intense joy and happiness that is so overwhelming it seems almost unbelievable. Such a moment has just come into mine. 

A year and a half ago, as I was approaching the age of compulsory retirement from government service, I was saddened by the thought that soon I would be parted from a work that has become my second love?the first, of course, being my wife. However, even after that time came, I was allowed to continue my involvement in geothermal energy development and I was happy; it was a source of personal satisfaction for it meant that my services were still of some use. 

Then like a bolt from the blue, came the announcement that the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation had elected me as its 1982 Awardee for Government Service. I could hardly believe it. It was not possible, but it was so. Coming as it did in the twilight years of my life, it was indeed a moment of great joy for myself and my family. Suddenly life seemed to have an increased meaning?a new purpose for being. 

After the elation had somewhat abated, however, came a moment of reflection and soul-searching. I asked myself, what have I really done to deserve such a great honor? Am I truly deserving? Then I realized that whatever it was that was being ascribed to me had been attained not by individual effort, but rather by the total efforts of so many. It was just my good fortune to have been singled out to represent this collective undertaking. 

I have been cited for a role in the development of geothermal energy in the Philippines and in guiding national awareness to the use of one of the most valuable natural resources of the country. I feel deeply humbled for this signal honor accorded me, especially since it was more of a national effort rather than an individual one that brought the Philippines to its present position as one of the leading countries of the world in the use of geothermal energy. 

Without the support given by the government and its instruments — the Executive Office, the National Science and Technology Authority, the Ministry of Energy, the Philippine National Oil Company, the National Power Corporation, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and the Bureau of Mines; by co-professionals, and by a host of agencies both foreign and local, geothermal development would not have progressed as much as it has. This development, born in the cradle of necessity some years before the 1973 energy crisis and nurtured through the state policy of energy self-reliance, is winning our battle for national economic survival. 

In accepting the Award, I would like to express, on behalf of my immediate family and my geothermal family (since I am said to be the father of Philippine geothermal development) and on my own, a deep sense of gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, not only for the incomparable honor bestowed on me, but also for its recognition of geothermal energy as an important indigenous energy resource to a developing country like the Philippines. 

To the Board of Trustees, I take this occasion for a sincere and most appreciative expression of my gratitude for this signal recognition to be counted among those worthy to give honor to the ideals which characterized the life of President Ramon Magsaysay and the courageous service which he rendered to the people of the Philippines.