{"id":839,"date":"2015-04-21T12:30:54","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blogs\/?p=839"},"modified":"2017-07-25T09:15:49","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T13:15:49","slug":"lifes-a-buzz-at-the-pollinate-energy-hive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/lifes-a-buzz-at-the-pollinate-energy-hive\/","title":{"rendered":"Life\u2019s a buzz at the Pollinate Energy Hive"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m Zara Marais, an environmental scientist based in Melbourne, Australia. With my ArchTam colleagues Sean Holmes and Louis Scipione, I\u2019m currently taking part in Pollinate Energy\u2019s Young Professionals Program in Hyderabad, India. We\u2019re sharing our journey here in the ArchTam Impact blog.\u00a0 Follow our journey and join the conversation below!<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019re starting to settle into the routine of life in \u201cThe Hive,\u201d Pollinate Energy\u2019s headquarters in Hyderabad, and learning more every day about the challenges and joys of establishing and expanding a social business.<\/p>\n

The two members of the Pollinate Energy team responsible for building the business in Hyderabad \u2014 known as the \u201ccity co-founders\u201d \u2014 are Paul and Pascal.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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\u2019s original co-founders) and Boris, who will both be the city-cofounders for Pollinate\u2019s 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 \u201cPinky\u201d the cook, whips up delicious curries for us every day!<\/p>\n

\"Image_1_690x355\"<\/p>\n

As Sean explained in his previous post<\/a>, we\u2019re here with a team of nine young professionals to help Paul and Pascal work on four key projects. The objective of the project I\u2019m working on is to increase recruitment of female Pollinators. With my team, I\u2019ll be focusing on barriers to recruitment of women in India and how Pollinate can break these down to ensure they\u2019re providing equal employment opportunities. As well as these projects, we\u2019re also training the new Pollinators that have already been hired. So far we\u2019ve worked with two new Pollinators (Kalyan and Anil, pictured with us below).<\/p>\n

\"Image_2_690x355\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s solar light product works.<\/p>\n

\"Image_8_690x355\"<\/p>\n

Exploring Hyderabad has been an incredible experience so far. It\u2019s a city of contrasts \u2014 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\u2019ve seen ancient architecture standing beside the vast, modern office buildings. As we\u2019ve started to enter the communities, we\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The journey has only just begun; more from us soon!<\/p>\n

\"Zara_89x100_BW\"Zara Marais (Zara.Marais@archtam.com) is a professional environmental scientist with ArchTam\u2019s 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 \u201c<\/em>Award-winning environmental practitioner shares three tips for new consultants<\/a>.\u201d <\/em>
\nLinkedIn:<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Zara Marais<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m Zara Marais, an environmental scientist based in Melbourne, Australia. With my ArchTam colleagues Sean Holmes and Louis Scipione, I\u2019m currently taking part in Pollinate Energy\u2019s Young Professionals Program in Hyderabad, India. We\u2019re sharing our journey here in the ArchTam Impact blog.\u00a0 Follow our journey and join the conversation below! Sean, Louis and I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,83],"tags":[138,66],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate-social-responsibility","category-sustainability-and-resiliency","tag-impact","tag-pollinate-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archtam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}