2019 Outstanding Young Person award goes to a Czech for the first time

Tokyo/Prague, Sept 23 (CTK) – The Outstanding Young Person international award for young personalities went to a Czech for the first time this year, CTK has learnt from the laureate, innovator Pavel Podruh, who was awarded for his projects of a self-supporting house and a household battery device.

The award has been for almost 40 years presented by the Japan branch of the Junior Chamber International (JCI) organisation, which associates some 200,000 members from 124 countries and its goal is to boost young people’s development. In the past, its members included personalities such as John F. Kennedy, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac.

JCI members annually nominate people under 40 for the prestigious award. The nominees are chosen from among young people whose activities support the ideas of social equality, environment protection etc. Out of them, the Japan branch chooses six winners.

“I nominated Pavel Podruh over his visionary approach to the open sharing of information and know-how with the public within his Self-Supporting House project, which brilliantly boosts and speeds up innovations. I am glad that it is him whom the Japanese JCI has chosen from among the proposed young innovators, entrepreneurs and social leaders from all over the world,” JCI Czech Republic Vice-President Miroslav Rys said.

Podruh launched his Czech Self-Supporting House project together with three colleagues four years ago. At present, his organisation involves dozens of cooperating firms and individuals with the joint goal of introducing cleaner technologies in practice. The project has been working without any subsidies.

Together with Michal Klecka from the GWL firm, Podruh has created a small, decentralised battery device for household, iBatt. Together with another partner, is is planning a green neighbourhood project near the west Bohemian centre Plzen.

Apart from Podruh, this year’s Outstanding Young Person laureates are Nuttanay Anuntarumpon from Thailand, Brighton Kaoma from Zambia, Tatsiana Zaretskaya from Estonia, Bridget Williams from New Zealand and Agustin Ramli from Indonesia.

rtj/dr/kva