I've just had lunch with Pedro of the Avina Foundation to discuss plans for our South America solar programme. Avina is our key partner in South America and does work across the continent on a wide range of issues.
Pedro comes over to Europe every few months to drum up support for South America. I arrange for him to meet several foundations to see how they could help. We hope to have our first volunteer in South America in the coming months once we've raised enough funding to support the project - so please do chip in if you can.
Here's a picture of Raul, our Avina counter-part in Argentina, demonstrating a solar panel to indigenous people. Raul was showing them how a small 1 watt solar panel can directly power a radio, which is fantastic for them as many of them spend weeks with their animals in very isolated areas with no means of communications.
Plans for our project in South America are gathering pace, although we still need more funds in order to recruit a volunteer and send him or her there for a few months to get things off the ground.
It's winter again in South America and the temperature is dropping in southern Argentina, particularly at night. There's a real problem with heating again, particularly among the indigenous communities in the rural areas. Children such as the one in the photo below tend to suffer the most from the cold.
That's why we're going to be doing some solar thermal, using the heat from the sun to generate heat in-doors as well as hot water. When we were there last year, the temperates dropped to -16 degrees at night. We were staying in unheated hostels in the plateaus and we were freezing cold - a solar heating system would have worked wonders.
If you'd like to donate to this work, please do click on the 'support this project' button on the right and fill in your donation details.
A number of you have asked us whether we're also interested in other forms of renewable energy. While our main focus is definitely on solar power, we are of course very interested in using other sources of renewable energy if these are appropriate to the local environment.
For instance, Patagonia, in southern Argentina, has lots of wind. That's why we're interested in hybrid solar and wind systems. Below is a photo of a prototype wind turbine developed by our partners in Patagonia:
It's housed in a small workshop at the back of the nuclear reactor site in Bariloche. That's because the head of our partner organisation there used to be the chief scientist of the nuclear reactor before he moved into social enterprise and renewable energy many years ago. Since then, he's harnessed the support of the other nuclear engineers and workshops to help with his new renewable energy projects. Excellent!
We've been developing plans for a microsolar programme in Southern Argentina. It's extremely exciting stuff. Patagonia is known for its amazing scenery, but few people realise that there is lots of poverty in the region. Access to electricity is also limited in the rural areas.
So we're teaming up with Gustavo Gennuso, a social entrepreneur who is very active in Bariloche in Patagonia. He already runs a network of schools and appropriate technology projects and is the former Chief Scientist of the nuclear reactor in Bariloche. He's now a specialist in renewable energy and gets volunteer assistance from engineers who still work at the nuclear reactor. That's pretty cool!
Our plan is to work with Gustavo to train disadvantaged youth to build and sell microsolar products, such as solar lanterns, solar radios and solar chargers for mobile phones.
Would you like to support this? Then click on the 'support this project' button and donate now!
In 1995, Rosario Andrada de Quispe and eight other women set up the organisation Warmi Sayajsunqo, which means 'persistent women' in the local language. Warmi's objective is to help the local indigenous people live in the Puna region with dignity and according to the Kolla culture.
They focused in particular on a microbusiness approach and founded the Kolla Bank, which is managed by more than 70 indigenous communities. The bank now serves more than 3,000 families, which use the bank's microloans to fund their microenterprises.
We're very impressed by Rosario and Warmi's work. They know how to run sustainable enterprises, which is why we want to work with them to help them set up their solar microbusinesses.
Please support us. We need your donations to help us set up this programme. £15 would allow us to produce a solar lantern, while £300 would allow us carry out a day's training for a group of indigenous people.
Testing a solar panel in San Salvador de Jujuy, northern Argentina. August 2007
According to indigenous leaders in northern Argentina, the price of kerosene is going up so high that rural households are resorting to making candles out of animal fat and donkey droppings, as in the photo below. The light emitted is pretty poor and doesn't last long, which is another reason why SolarAid's microsolar work is so urgently needed. Please donate to this project!
A local leader showing the inefficiency and dim light emitted from handmade candles (made out of animal fat and donkey dropping) in San Salvador de Jujuy, northern Argentina.
It's been a busy week here in London. It's been wonderful to have Pedro, Ricardo and German from the Avina Foundation visiting us. As you'll remember, the Avina Foundation are a leading South American organisation and they are helping us set up our solar programme in the region.
So we went to Cardiff in Wales on Tuesday to meet Peter Davies, Vice Chair (Wales) of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and John Pontin from the Converging World, an excellent organisation that is driving ahead with wind power for developing countries with a pioneering model of contraction and convergence.
We also had a meeting with a new foundation based in Wales that funds projects tackling climate change and poverty around the world. We'll be applying to them for some initial funding to help us get the project going.
However, it's unlikely we will manage to get all the funding we need from trusts and foundations, which is why your help is so urgently needed. So please click on the 'support' button and donate!
We're now back in the UK and trying to raise funds for this South America solar project. It's really exciting to be doing all this work. However, we really do need the funds urgently in order to start a pilot project in Argentina very soon.
Just £20,000 would allow us to do the pilot project while we try to raise the funds for the whole programme. With that £20,000 we could pay for a volunteer solar engineer from the UK to spend six months with Warmi in order to start training them, buy a first lot of solar materials, start setting up the systems and identify the best places for solar installations for when we start scaling up the programme. The photo above is of a solar system on a home in rural Bolivia - a place the electricity grid will never reach. So please give!
Nick
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