I wanted to take this chance to explain what Amy, Aditya Vikram Singh (our local fellow) and I were trying to achieve working on our Honeycomb (our assigned project for the Fellowship) in the ‘Hive’ (our living quarters, office and home-base for the Fellowship). A lot of bee-related terminology, I know.

Pollinate Energy is developing a new marketing strategy known as the Mobile Hives, which demonstrate the use of Pollinate’s product range in a mini expo in the heart of communities. One of the main goals of the Mobile Hives is to showcase Pollinate’s non-solar products, which are too heavy and bulky for the Pollinators (Pollinate Energy’s local Indian employees that sell the products direct to the community members) to carry around in their backpacks.

Our main task for our Honeycomb was to develop a “Mobile Hive Success and Impact Tracker” to keep an accurate record of the specifics of Mobile Hive events and anything that might influence their effectiveness, from the products that are being tested, to the weather and time of day. At the same time as developing this tracker, we trialled a number of different strategies for improvement of the Mobile Hive scheme.

Every day of the program was full of challenges and learning for me. As I’ve not really spent any decent length of time outside of English-speaking countries, not being able to speak the local languages (most people in Lucknow speak Hindi with a small amount of Udru) was a bit of a shock. Luckily, I had one of two local fellows, Aditya and Faizan, with me most of the time to help translate. We were also learning Hindi basics each morning, which was really helpful. I started to be able to direct my Ola drivers and introduce myself to members of the communities we visited.

I was also grateful to have a great group of people around me with a world of experience to share. There were eight international fellows, two local fellows, and two city leaders working together to help solve Pollinate Energy’s problems. We all got along well together and I really enjoyed collaborating with people from a wide variety of different backgrounds.

It was nice to get stuck into a problem outside of the field of engineering and put my analytical abilities to work in an entirely different context.

As they say in Hindi, “phir milenge!” or “see you later!”

Learn about Amy’s experience here and here.

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Last year, Pollinate Energy merged with Nepalese social enterprise Empower Generation. Their missions could not align better – both empowering local entrepreneurs to serve the most marginalised communities by delivering life-changing products and meaningful employment opportunities to people living in poverty, with a strong focus on sustainability.

We were fortunate enough to have the Pollinate Energy and Empower Generation management team visit the ‘Hive’ for a Q&A panel. After a few challenging days of learning to overcome cross-cultural communication barriers and logistical setbacks, the panel was exactly the inspiration needed to get our project back on track!

Sita Adkihari, Co-Founder and Director of Empower Generation, discussed how they have empowered local Nepalese women by providing opportunities for entrepreneurship through selling products such as solar lights and sanitary pads. The organization firmly believes that women are the best investment and strongest catalyst for change, because they will invest profit into their families’ and communities’ future when given an opportunity to earn meaningful income.

I’ve seen this first-hand through Pollinate Energy’s female entrepreneurs, who are referred to as Suryamukhis (which beautifully translates to “sunflowers”), when the women are in communities forming connections with mothers and families.

One night, after a busy afternoon of slum community visits, we watched the Bollywood hit Pad Man, which tells the true story of social entrepreneur and Padma Shri recipient – Arunachalam Muruganantham. He made it his mission to create and deliver affordable, safe and sustainable sanitary pads to women living in poverty in rural India, and at the same time empowering thousands of female entrepreneurs through his distribution model. It was exciting to see the extraordinary relevance of the film to our work, particularly the very similar female distribution model adopted by Empower Generation! This is a must-watch film, complete with fantastic Bollywood tunes and moves.

I’ve often found that the people you meet when travelling are what make the experience so unforgettable, and I was so amazed by the inspiring, innovative and ambitious women I met during this fellowship. From Sita’s unequivocal passion and inspirational mission for Pollinate Energy and Empower Generation, to the local women in the slum communities who are striving to make life better for their families, to Shivani Kanodi – Pollinate’s Fellowship Manager – who brightens up every day at the ‘Hive’ with her bubbly energy and positivity. I cannot wait to see what the team achieves next for female empowerment in India and Nepal.

Read more about Amy’s work with Pollinate Energy here and learn about her colleague Jack Blackwell’s experience here.

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In late August, after a week of traveling through northern India, visiting the cities of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, I arrived in Lucknow for the Pollinate Energy’s Professional Fellowship program. Although I thought I had done enough research before jetting off, nothing quite prepared me for the colorful chaos.

In a short time, I experienced the beauty of traditional Indian-Mughal architecture during sunrise at the Taj Mahal; I witnessed the generosity and “guest is god” philosophy of the people as I was warmly welcomed into their homes with offerings of freshly brewed masala chai; and I discovered that road lanes and line markings were merely suggestions, adding to the madness of dodging cows, goats, chickens, camels and even elephants!

After meeting with the fellowship team and settling into our dorms at the ‘Hive’ (brace yourselves for bee-related metaphors), we familiarized ourselves with our new city through an “Amazing Race” like tour around Lucknow, where we completed challenges, tasted local delicacies and were blessed in a temple.

On the second day of the program, we visited our first slum community called Balu Adda. Known as a shanty community, meaning that homes are essentially tents made from spare material such as tarpaulin and sheet metal. It houses around 115 families who are predominantly construction workers or rag-pickers (people who rummage through refuse to salvage materials to sell).

Balu Adda is just one of 370 urban slum communities in Lucknow. Many of these slums are not connected to city grid electricity or water supply, forcing people to forego these necessities, or resort to unsafe practices and products. Families rely on harmful kerosene for lighting, drink unclean water, and cook with dirty cookstoves resulting in detrimental health consequences. Witnessing this firsthand was a sobering and eye-opening experience, and further demonstrated the importance of our contributions over the next two weeks.

My colleague Jack Blackwell, as well as Aditya Vikram Singh, a local Pollinate fellow, and I worked together to develop the strategy and impact assessment of Mobile Hives in the slum communities. Mobile Hives are set up to showcase Pollinate Energy’s solar lights, water filters and safe cookstoves to the community, whilst educating families about the social and sustainable benefits of the products, which ultimately helps to improve their standard of living.

These first few days were an overload of information and the Hive was already buzzing with ideas!

Read more about Amy’s work with Pollinate Energy here and learn about Jack’s experience here.

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Energy poverty involves the lack of access to modern energy services. Although it is not easy for many of us to imagine a lack of electricity in our lives since we use it even while we sleep, there are 1.3 billion people in the world who live without a single watt of electricity.

In India, 292 million people do not have access to electricity — meaning they rely heavily on fossil fuels such as kerosene, for light, which causes health problems and major pollution issues. And this is all happening in today’s high-tech era, in which many people still do not think or care about where their power comes from. It’s not that we need to feel bad for living in the societies that we do, but it is important to be aware and conscious of the realities that others face and how small actions can help to improve lives. In 2012, the world’s largest blackout occurred, plunging 600 million people in India into darkness and leaving 300 million without access to modern energy services.

For a group of young Australians, this event was a catalyst for change that spawned Pollinate Energy (PE), an organization that offers sustainable solutions to social problems in urban India. PE does social good by enabling access to sustainable technologies, making these resources available and affordable to groups that would otherwise not have access. PE’s success has been made possible by the organization remaining fully accountable to the customer by working with communities to better understand their evolving needs and providing products and services that meet those needs.

ArchTam is currently a sponsor of the organization’s Young Professionals Program (YPP), which is held several times per year. Through YPP, PE remains committed to supporting the next generation of social entrepreneurs — offering programs in India that equip them with the leadership, problem-solving and innovation skills necessary to create positive change.

I was recently provided the opportunity to participate in YPP and spent two amazing weeks in Bangalore, India. The result was 13 individuals from different backgrounds thinking intensively, discussing and researching day and night about topics such as climate change, innovative ways of thinking to greatly influence the lives of others, how little ideas can make a big social impact, and how we can all help to make a difference. Our daily work revolved around redesigning and improving training processes, so that PE can more effectively access more families around the country.

We also participated in workshops on career development, leadership for change, and exploration of self during the mornings which left the afternoons to work on our projects with water filters and research. On these projects, we concentrated on sustainable solutions to improve quality of life and developed the training processes for new locations.

During this program, I had the opportunity to see firsthand what it means for an organization to create and provide sustainable solutions. I saw how important it is to make the people you’re helping part of the change and how giving them the tools they need can really make a difference in improving their way of life. It is a program I strongly encourage other people to pursue.

As an architect, I think spaces empower people, and cities make the societies we call home. So let’s create better environments and infrastructure that will foster the improved quality of life that we all deserve.

Shanti Barrera works as an architect consultant in ArchTam’s Strategy+ group in Munich, Germany. He brings his interests in social architecture and sustainable solutions together by working on his region’s corporate social responsibility team — with an ultimate goal of further expanding ArchTam’s consultancy in delivering social projects for organizations that need support.

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One skill that I’ve definitely improved on during my time in India is thinking on my feet. This is something we watched Pollinate’s Hyderabad city co-founders Paul and Pascal do every day as they ran the local office, known as the Hive. Examples of some of their hurdles included having the washing machine break down while there were 10 extra guests in the house. We witnessed the successful installation of the Hive’s first air-conditioning units; however, the installation team made an electrical error that left us without electricity for several days.

As we started to make progress on our Working Bee projects, the co-founders encouraged us to take on more responsibility around the office. This gave us a taste of the chaos and the rewards of their day-to-day work. On the day that I was to give a presentation to five women who had expressed an interest in becoming Pollinators, we had a six-hour power cut. To add to the challenge, we soon discovered that all five of the women only spoke Hindi. All of the presentation material was either in English or Telugu (the local language in the state of Telangana). We ended up running the presentation off of my half-charged laptop — translating the English messages from the slides and videos into Hindi with the help of Sweta, Pollinate Energy’s human resources manager. We then approached all of the Hindi speakers in the office for help, and interviewed each of the applicants in teams of three.

We all had a chance to practice thinking on our feet each evening as we entered communities with trainee Pollinators. Every community was different; sometimes, we received a warm welcome, and at other times we were met by a skeptical crowd. Every sale had to be approached from a different angle once the needs of a particular community were understood. Some communities already had access to electricity, but supply was unreliable and came at a high cost. Meanwhile, other communities had an alternative source of light (such as coconut oil lamps) but were paying daily to charge their mobile phones at local stores. The new Pollinators had to figure out which benefits of the solar product to focus on, and it was our job to prompt them with ideas if they got stuck. A good sales pitch and a dose of persistence were often rewarded, and it was always great to see smiles on the faces of both the customers and the Pollinators each time a sale was made.

Although the air-conditioning is usually working in my office, and I know I’m unlikely to lose my electricity if I pay my bills, my life at home, of course, has its own hurdles. I’ll definitely be using my new problem-solving skills long after my plane hits the tarmac in Melbourne, and I know I’ll always think back to my experience in Hyderabad. I’d strongly encourage anyone who’s looking for an unforgettable challenge and a dose of inspiration to apply for next year’s YPP.

Visit the Pollinate Energy website for more information on how you can become part of its Young Professionals Programme.

Zara Marais (Zara.Marais@archtam.com) is a professional environmental scientist with ArchTam’s Impact Assessment and Permitting team in Melbourne, Australia, and an enthusiastic bird-watcher. She is still buzzing from a recent encounter with an Eastern Ground Parrot during a trip to southwest Tasmania.
LinkedIn: Zara Marais

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Pollinate Energy is a social business with a simple mission — to improve the lives of India’s urban communities by giving them access to affordable products such as solar lights, water filters and cook stoves. As Zara has said in a previous post, we are training micro-entrepreneurs (or “Pollinators”) who provide door-to-door services selling and maintaining life-changing products in urban communities. These products save families money, improve health and increase quality of life.

There are 65 million Indians living in urban communities, surviving on an average of $1.52 a day. They can’t afford to buy even the simplest technologies to improve their daily lives; and so, many live without electricity, clean water or sanitation. Interacting with those living in these communities has been both challenging and rewarding. In many cases, people’s faces light up when we demonstrate the solar lights and talk about the water filters. Pollinate gives the families access to these products by offering deferred-payment plans, as most would have difficulty saving enough money to buy the products outright.

Most of the communities are made up of people from rural areas that come to the city in search of work. In many cases, these communities have been established for more than 10 years and, in some cases, up to 30 years. Pollinate has mapped approximately 540 different communities around Hyderabad that range in size from two to three tents, to others comprising over 200 tents. These communities usually consist of people who come from the same native village and work throughout the city as construction labourers, garbage collectors, handcraft makers or street stall workers. It is extremely difficult for families to make ends meet, and we have seen in communities that explaining what we are doing gives hope to these families and shows them that people care for them.

We feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to take part in this journey with Pollinate energy; so far, it’s been an experience that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. We still have a lot to learn and important work to contribute over the next week. Stay tuned to the ArchTam Impact blog for more insights into life in India with Pollinate Energy!

Louis Scipione is an environmental scientist specializing in contaminated land who is based in ArchTam’s Sydney, Australia, office. His previous careers cover many different industries, including working as a tradesman, a croupier, an IT professional, landscape designer and a stevedore.

The post Improving life in urban communities appeared first on Blog.

Sean, Louis and I have been here for four days now, working with the team from Pollinate Energy as they set up their operations in Hyderabad. We’re starting to settle into the routine of life in “The Hive,” Pollinate Energy’s headquarters in Hyderabad, and learning more every day about the challenges and joys of establishing and expanding a social business.

The two members of the Pollinate Energy team responsible for building the business in Hyderabad — known as the “city co-founders” — are Paul and Pascal.

Paul is originally from New Zealand, and has a background in corporate law and environmental policy. Pascal is a French surfer who used to work in advertising and fiercely guards his imported parmesan cheese. Paul and Pascal will spend a year here in Hyderabad training the local operations manager and sales manager, as well as recruiting a team of Pollinators — ensuring the business is capable of sustaining itself in the long term. Also living with us in the Hive are Emma (one of Pollinate Energy’s original co-founders) and Boris, who will both be the city-cofounders for Pollinate’s next expansion city. With so many people working together, the Hive (pictured below) is usually a bustling hub of activity. The best work is done in the kitchen, where “Pinky” the cook, whips up delicious curries for us every day!

As Sean explained in his previous post, we’re here with a team of nine young professionals to help Paul and Pascal work on four key projects. The objective of the project I’m working on is to increase recruitment of female Pollinators. With my team, I’ll be focusing on barriers to recruitment of women in India and how Pollinate can break these down to ensure they’re providing equal employment opportunities. As well as these projects, we’re also training the new Pollinators that have already been hired. So far we’ve worked with two new Pollinators (Kalyan and Anil, pictured with us below).

We run through theory with them in the morning, and then head out to the communities with them in the evenings to continue training in the field. Below is a picture of Kalyan, showing the leaders of a community how Pollinate Energy’s solar light product works.

Exploring Hyderabad has been an incredible experience so far. It’s a city of contrasts — old and new, loud and serene, rich and poor, beautiful and confronting. The Hive is located in a peaceful neighborhood, but only a few hundred meters away is a chaotic main street packed with people, traffic and street food vendors. Further into the city, we’ve seen ancient architecture standing beside the vast, modern office buildings. As we’ve started to enter the communities, we’ve met people who live without access to basic services like water and electricity. At the same time, most families within these communities will own a mobile phone, and it’s not uncommon for us to see satellite dishes attached to tents. We still have a lot to learn about the city and its people, and what role Pollinate Energy can play in addressing key social challenges.

The journey has only just begun; more from us soon!

Zara Marais (Zara.Marais@archtam.com) is a professional environmental scientist with ArchTam’s Impact Assessment and Permitting team in Melbourne, Australia, and an enthusiastic bird-watcher. You can also check out her previous ArchTam Impact blog post titled “Award-winning environmental practitioner shares three tips for new consultants.”
LinkedIn: Zara Marais

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All three of us will be blogging about our adventures in India over the next few weeks, right here on the ArchTam Impact blog. Below is my first post, so please leave a comment, share it around. We look forward to sharing our journey with you!

After mad rushes to get everything prepared back at home, we’ve finally made the 18-hour transit to “The Hive,” Pollinate Energy’s headquarters in Hyderabad.

Zara, Louis and I arrived around midnight to a very warm, 30-degree-Celsius (86-degree-Fahrenheit) heat, but the temperature wasn’t nearly as warm as the welcome we received from Paul, Pascal and the rest of the Pollinate Energy crew and volunteers. We’re now set for two weeks working with Pollinate as part of its Young Professionals Program.

Upon landing, it’s immediately apparent how fast-growing and multicultural Hyderabad is. With a population of close to 10 million, it’s approaching “mega city” status. Companies — including Google, Facebook, IBM and various other technology companies — have local headquarters in the Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consultancy (HITEC) city, and there is clearly a large interest in Hyderabad’s development on an international scale.

The city also has a large Islamic population and a noticeable mix of Hindu and Islamic cultures.

We’re not just here to take in the sights of this bustling city, however. The goal of Pollinate Energy in Hyderabad is primarily to prove the scalability of the not-for-profit social business across cities within India.

With an ambitious target of addressing energy poverty across 50 cities by 2020, Pollinate Energy’s expansion into Hyderabad is its first operation outside of Bangalore, and its success here is critical to future expansion plans across India.

Our task during the Young Professionals Program is primarily to train and assist local business men and women to manage their own companies. We will be accompanying these individuals into disadvantaged communities, helping them initiate and close sales of Pollinate’s range of clean, renewable energy products, which include solar lights and low-smoke cook stoves as well as water filters and several personal hygiene products. It will be an ambitious task, but it is something we’re really excited about and looking forward to.

Of course, we’re in the early days of this effort and, so far, we have all gathered a basic understanding of the city through training and a tour. When it all starts, we will visit the “invisible” communities of Hyderabad to make some lasting impacts and continue Pollinate’s work.

Stay tuned; there’s plenty more to come!

Sean Holmes is an ArchTam sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia.
LinkedIn: Sean Holmes

The post Hyderabad 101 appeared first on Blog.

Pollinate has sold more than 3,000 solar lights in Bangalore and reached approximately 470 urban slum communities, giving the thriving social business confidence in its plans to expand its operations to other cities in India later this year.

The possibilities are endless. As the community residents greet me with excitement and a welcoming smile, it’s clear the Pollinate brand is trusted. I asked one of the Pollinate co-founders why Pollinate has prospered when so many similar organisations struggle. Her response surprised me: “It’s because of our special sauce,” she said, and I took this to mean the differentiators that make Pollinate stand out.

During my time with Pollinate, I have observed two key differentiators that I believe are fundamental to the team’s success. The first differentiator is the people. An organisation’s biggest asset is its people, and Pollinate is no exception; its team full of motivated, passionate entrepreneurs and business leaders.

The second differentiator is the team’s client focus. Working in consulting, client focus is a driving factor for business success and is commonly preached. From being out in the field with Pollinate’s co-founders, it’s clear Pollinate goes above and beyond to ensure its products suit the needs of its customers; indeed, the business has focused on appropriate technologies and on developing a business model that suits its diverse customer base. They have trialed many products in the field and welcome constructive criticism from their customers, as it allows them to understand which products and approaches work, and informs those products’ further development.

To learn more about the journey of Pollinate, we had a training session on social entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is defined as the process of pursuing innovative solutions to social problems, while intrapreneurship involves bringing innovation and change within a large organisation. We learned about how to fail effectively, pivot, turn your friends into partners, think creatively and innovatively and believe in your ideas. As I related these learnings to my time at ArchTam, I could see that these insights were transferable and very relevant to large organisations. Whether you call it thought leadership, change-making, smart thinking or innovation workshops, we’re all working together to think of better ways to do things. I’m looking forward to implementing some of my new ideas as I return home next week, as soon as I work out my special sauce!

Until next time,

Megan

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As a team, we visited the Additya community in south Bangalore. In comparison to other communities, it’s considered relatively small but is still home to 150 residents. The hour-long journey from Pollinate headquarters gives us time to discuss our approach on site.

Despite all the prep work and piloting, I feel a mixture of nerves and excitement. How can I develop an emotional connection with the participant? How will I steer the conversation to yield relevant information if we deviate from the planned approach?

As always, our arrival into the community attracts a lot of attention and initially we take the opportunity to get some photos for our personal collections before scoping out the community to select our participants as planned.

It’s not long before we encounter a Pollinate customer who purchased a light six months ago; he has a family of four and his two children are attending school. I shake his hand and introduce myself in kannada, the local dialect. He smiles and invites us inside to meet his family.

Once seated on a rug laid out for us, I am surprised at how spacious his small, well-kept home feels. Pots and pans are arranged neatly on a small wooden shelf along with a small mirror and bowl containing a bar of soap. An assortment of blankets are folded and stacked behind us and a solar light hangs from the wooden frame above us. The home is lit adequately with a soft tone that further contributes to the calming ambience.

We talk through a translator and I explain that I am here to listen to his story and provide him with a platform to share it with the world. While I cannot immediately understand his response, the shy smile and gentle “Indian headshake” ignites an emotional connection within me and, I hope, him too.

His name is Sunil, 34 years old and originally from the rural Andhra Prakesh region east of Bangalore. Born to farming parents, he moved to the city with his wife and children in search of better working opportunities, a common story among slum residents. He and his wife both work six days a week in often dangerous construction jobs for a combined income of around 2500 rupees in order to provide food and education for their two young children.

When the conversation moves towards the solar light above us, Sunil has a lot to say. Firstly he explains how his old kerosene lamp would fill the home with smoke each night, and that since installing the solar light his children have stopped coughing. Being able to leave the light on all night also makes his family feel safer, particularly given cobra snakes and rats are regular threats in his community.

The story was completed with a demonstration from Sunil about how the light was used for preparing food and charging his mobile phone. We took Polaroid photos and shared them with his family for souvenirs. The smiles we exchanged spoke clearly across the language barriers as we expressed sincere gratitude to each other.

Back at Pollinate headquarters that evening, the group discusses the day’s highs and lows over dinner. I talk about the emotional connection I had made throughout the first story and the positive impacts the solar light had made. I see immediately that co-founder Emma is over-joyed, as she sees another example of how Pollinate Energy is inspiring not only to the local communities it visits, but for the Young Professionals helping it achieve its goals.

Until next time,

Chris

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