The interview below was conducted by Nan Mooney, an editor at a new philanthropic website called igivingworld, a project that aspires to greater impact, efficiency and solutions for the world from the philanthropic sector. Gordy Molitor, the interviewee, is Green Empowerment’s Executive Director, and has a deep commitment to the eradication of poverty.
How did Green Empowerment come about? What need was it hoping to fill?
Green Empowerment was born in 1997 from several interrelated communities in Portland, Oregon. They were all friends — social justice activists, environmentalists, and internationalists. These roots led naturally to the mission of Green Empowerment: To partner with rural communities in the developing world to implement renewable energy and water systems that alleviate poverty and preserve the environment. With the ideals of justice and sustainability as the basis for a development model, Green Empowerment’s first major project was funding the continuation of micro-hydro projects in Nicaragua that had been started by Ben Linder, a young engineer from Portland who had been killed, during the Nicaraguan civil war by the Contras. Green Empowerment continues to work with this Nicaragua NGO, and now at least eight other partners in six countries.
Why did you opt to focus specifically on developing renewable energy and water systems?
Because renewable energy and water are basic to development and the eradication of poverty.
Over 1.6 billion people worldwide live in the dark. Not only is this unjust; it means that they will not live healthy and productive lives and will remain on the sidelines of the modern economy. Without electricity, they will not have health clinics with refrigeration for vaccines or essential medical instruments. Without electrical light in their homes, they will suffer respiratory and eye problems from indoor air pollution, and not be able to study or work after dark. Without electricity to run small motors, they will not be able to power mills, lathes, or lights in their small businesses. And without electricity they will not have cell phones or computers that are so essential to participating in today’s economy.
Water is, of course, essential. The lack of potable water is the number one cause of preventable death in the developing world. Two million people die every year, due to diarrheal diseases, most are children less than five years of age.
Green Empowerment started with a focus on renewable energy and added water, after listening to the priority needs of the communities in which we work.
What is most innovative about Green Empowerment’s approach?
I believe that Green Empowerment’s sustainability and development models set us apart from most foundations and western NGOs and make our investments highly leveraged and sustainable.
Our projects are environmentally, technically, socially and economically sustainable. By considering and balancing all four of these factors in the design and implementation of our projects, they will continue to help eliminate poverty for years to come.
Our development model is based on the working relationship between local communities benefiting from the project, national host-country technical NGOs, and Green Empowerment. It is very much like a three-legged stool. Each leg of the stool has it respective and important role that complements, harmonizes and supports the others and leads to the ultimate success and sustainability of the renewable energy and water projects. The community is not simply the beneficiary of the renewable energy or water system. It is the critical actor in the design, financing, implementation, maintenance and evaluation of the system. Host-country technical NGOs link the community, Green Empowerment, local regional and national governments donors and others. They know the local language and culture and have a long-term commitment to the rural communities in which we work.
We are also developing an international Service Learning program, where we partner with universities to integrate sustainability issues into their curriculum and take students and faculty overseas for hands-on experience on in the developing world. We have university partnerships with Cal Poly Pomona, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Presidio School of Management, Virginia Tech, and Portland State University. We also place interns with our partners, in a relationship where the interns strengthen the capacity of our partners and learn a great deal in the process.
How do you select Green Empowerment projects? Are you typically part of a project from the start or are you more likely to invest in existing ventures?
Our host-country technical partners lead in selecting projects, by deciding which technologies we will work with and in identifying and organizing communities in which we will work. Our projects, therefore, depend on technical capacities of our partners. For example, we have several partners that work almost exclusively on micro hydro projects. One is internationally recognized for its work with Green Empowerment on solar health clinics in a war zone, another has won awards for its work with ram pumps, and another is a leader in developing small wind power. We are developing a coalition of NGOs working on biogas digesters in Latin America. Where these projects are implements is usually a joint decision between our partner, local government, Green Empowerment and, of course, the community in which it will be installed.
How do you involve the local community in your work?
The local communities are involved in all phase of our projects. They contribute to the design of a project by helping to locate and size the system. For example, the community will identify the water source; and the women will be involved in the location of water distribution points. The community will assist with the financing of the system, by donating land, local materials, and the hard labor of laying water pipes or elevating solar panels. Finally, the community is responsible for the ongoing management of the system, in establishing a committee or small corporation to operate the system and to collect tariffs to finance ongoing operation and maintenance.
Your work involves partnering with NGOs in the developing world. How do you ensure these collaborations go smoothly?
The most important factor in the success of our projects is that Green Empowerment establishes long-term, open and constructive working relationships with our partners, based on mutual respect and trust. Because they are all technically competent in their fields and because we work with them, over a period of years, on projects of priority to the communities that they work with and of importance to their institutional development, we are valued partners. We are in frequent e-mail and phone contact with them, visit nearly all of them at least annually, have interns working in many of their offices, and have a staff person working from our partner’s office in Peru.
In addition to this constructive relationship, Green Empowerment undertakes a number of due diligence steps with all of our projects. We review them technically, financially and programmatically, against our sustainability criteria. We sign sub-grant agreements for each project, require written progress reports and financial reports, and make on-site visits to nearly all of the projects that we fund.
What has been one of your most notable successes so far?
In Peru, in collaboration with our partner, Soluciones Practicas, we are developing a viable model for decentralized renewable energy electrification. Currently developing countries use the traditional model for electrification of centralized power generation and extensive national grids. This traditional model is not viable for isolated rural areas, because of their low population density, distance from sources of power generation and the high cost of extending the grid up mountainsides and into rain forests.
We completed a plan for electrification of a municipality that had some of the lowest electrical coverage in the country. The plan identified the potential for 11 micro hydro systems, 9 wind systems, and 26 village solar systems. Since the plan was completed in 2008, we have funded 1 of the micro hydro systems, 2 of the wind systems and are working with the municipality and the local utility to fund the implementation of the village solar systems.
This planning methodology is being replicated in another part of Peru and could be adapted for use in other countries, as a way of using decentralized power generation to electrify isolated areas.
Have there been any mistakes or missteps along the way? What have you learned from them?
Of course, we have made mistakes. And we have learned a lot, over the past 12 years. Green Empowerment’s first projects relied on engineering and funding from the United States.
We learned that nearly all of the engineering necessary for renewable energy projects already exists in the countries where we work, and that it is most effective — in terms of designing an appropriate system, sustainability, and follow-up on the installed system — to build upon that local competency.
We also learned that our local partners are very effective in finding resources for renewable energy and water projects. In fact, most village-level projects that we help to finance are largely financed by our partners through donations from local government, the communities, and other funding sources, which Green Empowerment could not access.
What are Green Empowerment’s most pressing short-term goals?
As I write this response, we were organizing the final details of Sun, Wind and Gears, a 35-mile, bike-borne renewable energy fundraising event sponsored by SolarWorld, the largest solar cell manufacturer in the Americas. The Green Empowerment event coincides and integrates with SolarWorld’s first anniversary in Oregon and the topping out of their second solar-cell factory. We hope that this will develop into a signature event for the renewable energy community in the Portland-area and for Green Empowerment.
What do you envision for the organization over the longer term?
Green Empowerment will remain committed to its roots in social justice and environmentalism and to working toward a more just and sustainable world. We will continue to deepen and expand our programming with our existing partners and will expand into other Latin American, Asian, and, hopefully, African countries. We will continue to work with micro hydro and solar technologies and expand our capacity to work with biogas, wind and in-stream turbines. We will also continue to develop our model for regional planning for renewable energy electrification.
