EMPOWER: Vol 5. Issue 3 – Sept 2024

Empowerment through Enterprise

The vision of our founders endures, and our impact grows with greater vigor. In this issue we describe the progress of some of the enterprises we support, and development activities to empower volunteers and applicants. We also recognize key partners in our journey: the volunteers and the IEEE Societies that power our impact.

Our primary mission is to grow local enterprises in underserved communities to improve livelihoods and create climate resilience. The path to funding, building and operating enterprises starts with community engagement and passion from our applicants, and empathy and diligence from our volunteers. One of the articles in this issue describes the ten new enterprises we funded in the first half of 2024, and the four for which we provided expansion funding.
A mainstay of our development activities has been the ISV Conference held in conjunction with the Power Africa Conference. This year the conference will be in Johannesburg, South Africa, with participation of more than sixty new and old Stakeholders and ISV leadership. The first article in this issue describes this conference. The following article describes an ISV Symposium hosted by our South Asia Working Group in Gandhinagar, India, and supported by the IEEE Gujarat Section, Dr. Narain Hingorani, Sunmoksha, e-Hand Energy, and the Wheels Global Foundation.

We also feature two new development activities, one initiated by our Education Committee, and the other by our North America Working Group. With the goal of empowering the most underserved, and for building trust through engagement, Professor Toby Cumberbatch started a Sankofa Initiative to bring STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) to these forgotten communities. On another front, our North America Working Group, did an Alaska study trip to assist Native Alaskan communities in proposal development for electrification and productive use of technology. This trip was co-organized with Alaska Unlimited, an Alaska native woman led NGO. The trip was generously supported by IEEE NPSS and PES.

We end with a report on a recent award received by Professor Omowunmi Mary Longe, the founder of first-ever ISV Student branch at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Our work progresses through the dedication of our volunteers.

In future editions, we will report on our work in China and South America Working Groups, the impact of some of the enterprises we support, and we will recognize the “Big Four” who have supported us over the years.

PowerAfrica Conference 2024

Join us at the IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica Conference 2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa, from October 7-11! This year’s conference is themed “Towards Ensuring Energy Security in Africa”.

As usual, the premier event unites global research scientists, engineers, and practitioners to explore cutting-edge power systems innovations and address Africa’s unique energy challenges.

At the conference, experts from manufacturing, academia, telecommunications, technology companies, and electric utilities engage themselves. They also experience a dynamic technical program featuring exhibitions, tutorials, workshops, keynote speeches, and presentations designed to foster strategic partnerships and actionable plans.

The IEEE Smart Village (ISV) program enhances the conference with exclusive activities, including a Welcome Reception, intensive workshops, all-day sessions, plenary events, and a technical tour. The program culminates in focused workshops, awards presentation, and a farewell banquet, promoting innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development.

At the conference, industry leaders, innovators, and experts will discuss and develop solutions for Africa’s energy future.

To secure a spot to network, learn, and collaborate at PowerAfrica 2024.

Anticipate SAWG Symposium India

Get ready for an electrifying experience at the IEEE Smart Village’s 2024 Symposium!

Join us on November 7 & 8, 2024, at the prestigious Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. This event, hosted by the ISV South Asia Working Group, promises to be a hub of innovation, collaboration, and inspiration.

It is an event dedicated to empowering underserved communities through sustainable and scalable enterprises. Engage in insightful discussions, collaborative workshops, and abundant networking opportunities. Connect with professionals, organizations, entrepreneurs, and students to drive meaningful change and create a positive impact across India and the globe.

You will hear from leaders in the field such as Prof. Anil Gupta of the Honey Bee Network: they maintain a grassroots database for ethical development in India. Col. Vijay Bhaskar has deployed microgrids in northeast India, Lin Thu Hein in Myanmar. Representatives from Bhutan, Rwanda and Bangladesh will speak about productive use of technology. You will learn about hybrid financing, climate resilient development, and community need driven technology deployment. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to be part of a transformative movement. Together, we can create thriving communities and a brighter future.

For further information and registration, click here.

ISV Increases Numbers of Funded Enterprises

IEEE Smart Village (ISV) has reached a new agreement in 2024 to increase the number of enterprises it funds each year, to scale up our impact.

Currently, ISV focuses on small enterprises with funding around $25k, with the goal of vetting their operations for consideration for future funding up to $200k. We are proud to report that in the first half of 2024, the funding of ten new enterprises worth $363,185 has been approved; Seven have executed agreements to begin implementation. Additionally, four expansion agreements totaling $87,000 have also been executed.

Of the fourteen enterprises, six are in Africa, two are in China, one in North America, one in Latin America, and four in South Asia.

See the list of New Agreement Completed below:

Implementation has started at:

1. MEED Renewables: Furana LightUp Project, Kaduna State, Nigeria
2. WETECH: Establishing an Aquaculture Centre in Malawi
3. ONE INNOVATION HUB: Connectivity to Uplift Livelihood, Kwara, Nigeria
4. AEP: Guatemala – Poptun, Petén – Permaculture and Solar Dried Fruits
5. GGP China – Heilongjiang – Rural Breeding and Entrepreneurship with Granary Roof Solar PV
6. GCB: China – Gansu Solar-Based Distributed Generation in Pastoral Areas
7. EPS: Nigeria – Niger Delta – Fixed Energy Rate for Solar Home Systems

The new agreements in progress include:

1. Bhutan Foundation: Bhutan, Solar Electrification of Katsho Eco Camp
2. EQUINOCT: India – Kerala, Community Resource Efficiency Hub for Coastal Women Entrepreneurs
3. E-hands: India, Maharashtra, Livelihood Focused Solar Microgrids

Expansion Agreements Completed; Implementation has started at:

1. Bright Hope Turkana: Natoot Farm Solar Irrigation, Kenya
2. Computers LLC: Molokai Solar + Storage Clean Energy, Hawaii
3. Africa Development Promise: Women-led Solar Cold Storage Cooperative, Rwanda
4. Magan Sangrahalaya Samiti: Empowering Youth & Women of Aravalli, India

Note: The above are deployments in progress, impact assessments will be provided soon.

ISV Moves STREAM To Marginalized and Impoverished Communities

By Toby Cumberbatch, Chair, ISV Education Committee
Ray Larsen, Co-Founder and Chair 2009-2019, IEEE Smart Village

Isolated, marginalized, impoverished, urban and rural communities far from the end of the dirt road in the less industrialized world, are forgotten. When Ray Larsen and Robin Podmore started Smart Village, they realized that electric light and facilities to charge a cellphone (should a signal be available) are transformational. They also understood that without the ability to read or write, these inhabitants have neither the means nor knowledge to communicate their needs or request the services that are rightfully theirs, so will never become truly self-empowered and prosperous. Today, illiteracy, lack of education, dwindling resources and infrastructure, corruption, and climate change all work to drive these communities further into isolation and impoverishment.

Inspired by the Aashraa Foundation Odisha’s vocational awareness program in the slums of Bhubaneswar, India, the Sankofa initiative has been established to initiate a dialog and develop pilot programs to bring STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) to these forgotten communities. The group currently comprises members from 14 countries—India, the USA, Africa, and Europe organized into three working groups: curricula, documentation and communication, and implementation.

We are fortunate that within the group, many are already teaching and have strong existing community connections. Based on the maxim “you don’t know until you try”, we intend to implement at least three pilot programs in three countries this year. With this learning, we will update our approach to implement five pilot programs next year to demonstrate that it is possible to engage, teach, and learn from the poorest of the poor. From this, a set of guidelines will emerge to help others start their initiatives.

Our goal is to teach these uneducated children the foundational concepts of STREAM through paths that resonate with their daily lives and cultural contexts and have a second-order impact on their families and their communities. Reflecting the essence of Sankofa, we honor the past by building on local knowledge and traditions, ensuring that our teaching is rooted in the cultural heritage of the communities we serve, enabling us to create a future where every child can succeed in STREAM fields, cognizant of their connection to culture and community.

Acknowledging the challenges of sustainability, we commit to leveraging natural resources by integrating familiar elements from their surroundings, such as flora, fauna, water, food, and everything at hand and in everyday use into their lessons, developing human-created solutions that are both practical and impactful.

• Basic science is introduced through observation of the naturally driven systems to hand such as the behavior of flora and fauna, other biological processes, heat transfer, precipitation, and water flow. We connect these lessons to sanitary practices such as the importance of washing hands to prevent disease, understanding food chains and their impact on climate, and the creation of sanitary pads to improve menstrual health.
• The fundamentals of technology come from observation of how natural and available elements, such as the connection of sticks, stones, and fibers solve practical problems that support human activities, e.g. levers, etc. In the longer term, through an immediate understanding of familiar activities, we introduce algorithmic literacy using community-specific routines such as fetching water to create instruction sets.
• Without being able to read, children are limited to experiential learning—access to the written word provides unlimited learning.
• The principles of civil and mechanical engineering arrive through activities such as building sandcastles, playing with stones, diverting flowing water, rotary motion, and heat transfer, which reveal the relationship between basic processes and larger engineering concepts.
• Culture is an art that sets the stage for these communities to teach the teachers, making the teachers embrace the dynamics of different cultures. Art will further enhance the embedded STREAM ideas through creative visualization.
• We teach the language of mathematics through playing with numbers, geometries, shapes of natural elements, scales using rulers, basic proportions, calculation of time through the sun’s position, etc. Activities with more practical, immediate impact might encompass leveraging their experiences as street vendors or farmers to teach arithmetic through practical applications that involve money and trade. This practical knowledge will provide the foundation for more advanced arithmetic and mathematical concepts in the future.

We are fortunate to work with and learn from the Aashraa Foundation which has implemented a vocational awareness program in Bhubaneswar. Many of the families are daily workers, spending over half of their income on rent, leaving them little for food and other needs, and without the services we take for granted such as potable water, toilets, and electricity.

Additionally, these communities face serious intrinsic problems, such as drug abuse, alcohol issues, domestic violence, and child labor. More than 70% of the women around 40 years old are undereducated widows. Many parents take no responsibility for their children’s education, regarding them as a source of income—consequently, children often feel that education is unimportant and see no future.

To reach a position from which they could start teaching these families, the Aashraa Foundation spent two years building trust with the community sufficient to establish a “school”. They introduced weekly nutrition kits to help children get the food they needed, strengthening the relationship with their families. They organized quarterly health camps, providing free medicine where needed.

With the essentials in place, the Foundation was able to open an informal education center to encourage families to send their children to learn. Through games and fun activities to get kids excited about coming to school, they teach using methods that don’t require electricity or expensive tools. They invite local heroes to share their stories, inspiring the children.

We recognize the importance of aligning our efforts with broader educational standards, through collaboration with education experts and learning from the available literature. We will therefore ensure that our curriculum not only meets local needs, as defined in agreement with the target communities and their representatives but also fits into the larger educational framework. This alignment will help us measure progress effectively and ensure our students meet global education standards.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that we have a great deal to learn from these same communities: resilience in the face of extreme poverty, some small insight into a wealth of traditional environmental knowledge (TEK), and how to really live with the land.

ISV North America Working Group (NAWG) Organizes Study Trip to Alaska

As part of its initiative to assist Native American communities in proposal development for electrification and productive use of technology, the IEEE Smart Village (ISV) North America Working Group (NAWG) has organized a study trip to Alaska, with YP and Women In Engineering (WIE) participants from ISV, NPSS and PES.

A group of four IEEE Smart Village volunteers (authors of this paper) traveled to Alaska with two primary objectives: attending the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference, and visiting remote villages considered underserved. This trip provided a unique opportunity to engage with industry experts and local communities, gaining insights into the challenges and innovations in Alaska’s energy landscape.

In a prior trip hosted by Alaska Unlimited (“AU”) in 2023, a member of the ISV NAWG assessed the need for cleaner, local alternatives to diesel electricity generation. Millions of gallons of diesel are consumed annually in each of many small, sparsely populated, remote communities in the rural hinterland. The supply chain is difficult, and grid connection is unreliable and expensive. There is minimal sunshine for six winter months.

AU is an Alaska native women led 501(c)(3), with the purpose to promote direct beneficial economic diversification, stability, and growth in rural Alaska. Together, the AU and IEEE team participated in the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage, and made a study trip to three rural communities of Kotzebue, Kivalina and Noatak.

The study reported the needs, potential solutions, and potential collaboration for further study as a path to pilot or commercial deployment of clean and sustainable solutions including micro-nuclear, multi-seasonal energy storage etc.

Omowunmi Longe Receives 2024 Women in Engineering and the Built Environment Lifetime Achievement Award

Professor Omowunmi Mary Longe, the founder of first-ever ISV Student branch at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa has been honored with the 2024 Women in Engineering and the Built Environment Lifetime Achievement Award.

Professor Longe is presently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Science, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and she is also the Chair of Smart Power and Energy Research Group in the department.

She was honored for her long-standing commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and service in the field of engineering, which have had a lasting impact on students, colleagues, and the broader community.

Professor Longe is a Senior Member of IEEE (SMIEEE), and Senior Member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SMSAIEE). Within IEEE, she is actively involved in IEEE–WIE, IEEE–PES, IEEE-PES WiP programs.

She is the pioneering IEEE PES WiP Lead for South Africa and Southern Africa, the global Vice Chair of the IEEE PES Women in Power executive committee for 2022-2023, IEEE PES Long Range Planning Committee (2022-2023) and Education Chair for IEEE Smart Village – Africa Working Group (2022-2023).

A big congratulations to Prof. Omowunmi Mary Longe!