Project 90’s Community Partnership team has been highly active since the start of the year: in finalising the engagement process and pilot site development as part of the City of Cape Town’s Nyanga electricity upgrade initiative; running the 4th round of EU Smart citizens workshops and representing BRICS civil society organisations at the 2nd annual summit of the BRICS New Development Bank.
The Nyanga site is set for the first round of demonstration sites to be upgraded from a mid-boundary to street front cabling system before the end of April. This will then give the residents time to see how the upgrading process is set to work and what the workmanship looks like. This is the most critical part of the whole project because community acceptance of the line-upgrades has been the key issue that has been the problem for the last six years. Watch this space to see how it all works out.
The 4th round of workshops for the EU SMART Citizens in Action project went off smoothly as the team gave feedback to community members about the initial solutions to the identified problems on energy access. This allowed the team to develop action points for further mobilisation by community. Over the coming months, we are putting together recommendations to municipalities on the need for strategic plan in addressing energy poverty in low-income households.
Finally, Community Engagement Facilitator, Gray Maguire was invited to New Delhi, India to talk to the New Development Bank about their social and environmental framework. As the bank is still at such an early stage it is a critical time to work with the bank to ensure they adopt an approach that genuinely seeks to promote sustainable development while maximising benefits to the environment and society.
