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Misión en Español
Green Empowerment partners with rural communities in the developing world to implement renewable energy and water systems that alleviate poverty and preserve the environment.
We bring electricity and water to communities in the less developed world through renewable energy systems to stimulate positive social and economic advances. All our projects emphasize environmental concerns, including environmental education, resource conservation, watershed mapping, restoration and protection activities.
We emphasize local leadership, community participation, and long-term economic and environmental sustainability. We develop lasting partnerships with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in emerging countries to build sustainable capacity for renewable energy and water systems. Our projects produce electricity for residential and community use to promote local economic development and micro-enterprises and deliver potable water. In our partnerships, we assist with feasibility studies, technical training, project construction, commissioning, organizational planning, publicity and fundraising. We look to our local NGO partners and communities to determine their own priorities and goals.
An important goal and outgrowth of the mission of Green Empowerment is to conduct outreach, education, and training in the United States to promote understanding of the global indivisibility of environmentalism, social justice, and sustainability. Fundamental social and environmental problems cannot be solved without a global perspective.
Read Green Empowerment and Our International Network of Organizations (.pdf)
What's the Need for Renewable Energy and Water?
- About a quarter -of the world--nearly two billion people--have no electricity
- One in six people, more than 1.1 billion people in the world lack access to clean drinking water. According to the LA Times, "Two million die each year from water-related diseases, which account for 80% of all illness in the developing world. At any given time, half the population in the developing world is sick from a water-related malady, and 10,000 a day die"
- Clean water is the first and most important step towards public health
- Poverty alleviation and access to reliable energy are inextricably linked. Reliable energy provides people with the opportunity to engage in labor-saving agricultural processing, micro-enterprise, handicrafts, and reading at night.
- Decentralized generation of energy resources encourages local leadership--and better meets the needs of the local population. Rather than waiting for an extension of the national electrical grid, that may never come, people are proactively constructing community-owned and operated energy systems. Distributing power creates a more equitable world.
- Use of renewable energy helps stop global warming. Unless greehouse gas emissions are reduced, the Earth could warm up at a rate faster than it has in the past 10,000 years.
- For rural people with limited economic resources, renewable energy is often the cheapest option for electricity, making it economically sustainable. The expansion of community sized renewable energy projects is necessary both to provide energy services without polluting and to create economies of scale necessary for a sustainable world.
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