I was looking for German examples of alternative currencies, since I´ve been talking about Spain, Greece, and US examples. I also know of Germany´s Heidemarie Schwermer from teaching with my ESL texts. The first article here mentions Germany, anyway.
I´ve heard of Transition Towns from research in getting my grad degree. This article mentions some interesting practices.
India´s SELCO sounds like it has had a bumpy start in finding its soul, but now is even connected to SEWA. I´d heard of SEWA recently when I was helping my wife with a university project. I´ve also heard of other solar projects, including especially Grameen Shakti, which was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2007, I think. They are spreading solar power and other RE technologies. I have also found two US based initiatives promoting solar power in Central America. I´ll have to check their names again.
Greek town creates its own alternative currency
Alternative currencies keep resources and economic systems close to home and have both a trickle-down and a ripple-out effect.
BerkShares,
a currency adopted by towns in western Massachusetts to support local
businesses, feature the image of W.E.B. DuBois, an early leader of the
US civil-rights movement. Towns in Greece, Germany, and elsewhere in the
US are also using alternative currencies.
Scott Malone/Reuters/File
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/0505/Greek-town-creates-its-own-alternative-currency
Transition Towns moves communities beyond sustainability to resiliency
The 320 Transition Town initiatives in 14 countries focus on urban agriculture, crowdfunding, and other social enterprises, using a 12-step model to organize a community toward a sustainable, resilient future.
Braham
Amadi (left) and Nikki Henderson pose in a community garden behind a
low-income housing development in Oakland, Calif., last summer. Mr.
Amadi is CEO of the nonprofit People's Community Market. The Transition
Towns Network helps cities move away from an oil-based economy by
promoting projects such as community gardens.
Kim White/Reuters/File
....
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/0424/Transition-Towns-moves-communities-beyond-sustainability-to-resiliency?nav=484365-csm_blog_post-bottomRelated
In India, SELCO brings solar power to the people
SELCO founder Harish Hande set out to dispel the myths that poor people can't afford or maintain solar technologies.
Children
watch television powered by solar energy at Meerwada village in the
central Indian state of Madhya Prades. The solar company SELCO has sold
solar power to poor Indians by carefully understanding their needs.
Adnan Abidi/Reuters/File
In India, one iconoclastic solar company employs deep knowledge of the ways
communities use energy to overthrow the traditional means of bringing power to
the people.
Now,
coming off a September meeting with President Barack Obama, Bangalore, India, -based SELCO is stepping into the light of international attention. As a UN
report (PDF) from last year shows, it's
been a difficult journey—and one with lots of lessons for other social
enterprises.
Since 1994, SELCO has transitioned from a simple solar-light provider to
an energy-solution company seeking to correct the failings of the Indian energy
market and provide affordable energy to the poor.
Founder Harish Hande, a University
of Massachusetts Ph.D who'd become
enthusiastic about rural solar energy during field work in the Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka, says he set out to dispel three myths when he launched the company
from an office in his aunt's home:
1) Poor people cannot afford sustainable technologies;
2) Poor people cannot maintain sustainable technologies;
3) Social ventures cannot be run as commercial entities.
2) Poor people cannot maintain sustainable technologies;
3) Social ventures cannot be run as commercial entities.
The Indian energy market has largely failed the rural poor, explains the
UN report, because “most of India’s rural population does not have access to
electricity. Instead, they are dependent on highly polluting and inefficient
sources of energy such as kerosene or forest wood.” India’s massive blackouts
this summer reveal major
problems even for the people connected to the central power grid. Solar options have been present, but no banks were willing to make
loans for the high start-up costs of solar energy. Furthermore, rural
inhabitants had formed a negative perception of solar power based on
government-installed solar street lights that were not maintained and would
stop functioning after a few months.
SELCO acted to correct these breakdowns with a business model built on
products and services people needed. In the mid 1990s, Hande began fixing some
of the pre-existing solar street lights and training locals on how to maintain
the technology themselves. Fast-forward a few years: these now-experienced
technicians were snapped up by SELCO as employees.
At SELCO’s inception, Hande insisted that the company be a commercial
enterprise rather than dependent on grants, which could run out or be
unreliable. He felt that the poor would “be willing to pay for technology if
they found it useful.”
Drawing on various equity investments and early loans from Tata BP Solar and USAID, through
SELCO’s US-based non-profit partner Winrock International, Hande was able to set up three rural service centers, “which were
essential for creating a sustainable rural delivery model.” By relying on the
local, experienced solar technicians from its service centers, SELCO was able
to provide reliable solar power to even the remotest of customers. The
technician customizes SELCO’s products and services based on his local
knowledge of the customer.
The UN report describes a hypothetical customer:
"His need is for a minimum of four lights, one each for the
kitchen, bedroom, living room, and cowshed. However, a deeper understanding of
his lifestyle might reveal that while he needs these four rooms to be lighted,
the rooms need not be lighted simultaneously."
A smart SELCO salesperson would install technology for four lights but
only sell the customer two actual lamps.
The solar technicians literally sat with midwives during nighttime
births and calculated budgets with street vendors to determine the ways each
used electricity and when it was needed most. Hande explains:
"Today, when we design a solution for a midwife, a vegetable
vendor, or a mason, we begin with the precept that the solution must pay for itself.
It should be financed from the additional income that it generates. There is a
big difference between creating a want and selling a product, and identifying a
need and designing a solution to fulfill it. We always want to focus on the
need."
SELCO's name for the individualized, one-day-at-a-time repayment plan
for each client, based directly on the cash flow freed up by the solar lights,
is "doorstep financing." It's a format the company believes deeply
in, going so far as to organize field trips for loan-wielding bankers to show
how valuable solar power is to its customers.
But even the best ideas can fail if the global market takes a turn in
the wrong direction, as they did in 2005 when SELCO diversified its supplier
base for cheaper products and Germany started subsidizing its solar market, causing global prices to plummet.
On the edge of financial disaster, Hande stabilized company costs and
reassessed its business model. SELCO eventually climbed into profitability by
2008 after a second round of funding from socially oriented investors such as International
Finance Corporation, E+Co, and Good Energies and Lemelson Foundation.
What might have become a fatal crisis for SELCO turned out to be a
useful course correction.
“In retrospect, Harish feels that those difficult days helped SELCO not
only refine its business model but also to have a better set of investors whose
philosophy is aligned to that of SELCO,” concludes the UN study.
SELCO had determined that its success depended on several key practices:
reliance on a network of locally connected salespeople, all of them on staff; a
strong, flexible relationship with a single reliable supplier, Tata BP; and,
above all, an intimate knowledge of the electricity needs of its customers.
Strong relationships with philosophically aligned investors, suppliers,
employees, and clients, coupled with an unwavering mission to its social
objective, are key to SELCO’s success.
This approach is also the reason SELCO’s growth strategy is to replicate
itself rather than to scale up the original business. Hande recognizes that for
long-term growth, SELCO must continue to operate in the context and communities
of the people it serves and understands best. A growth alternative—setting more
and more aggressive sales targets in existing locations—might actually lead the
company to turn away from the low-income buyers it aspires to serve.
Today, 90 percent of SELCO’s clients pay for their solar systems with
credit. SELCO technicians work out of one of the company's 25 energy service
centers, which employ 170 people in Karnataka and Gujarat. They have "sold solar lighting to more than 110,000 rural homes
and to 4,000 institutions” and, with the help of the aforementioned social
investors, aim to reach twice that number.
The UN study concludes with Hande explaining, “It is better if we now
focus on building other SELCOs rather than trying to grow this SELCO.”
“Every staffer, including Hande, is an employee," notes Business
Today. "The firm does not take out profits
but reinvests in the business.”
The result has been a good idea that has led to other good ideas, like a
small local startup that leases SELCO lights to street vendors who only need
them part of the day. Today, SELCO's "innovation department and incubation
laboratory," funded in partnership with the Self
Employed Women's Association Bank, sets
out to “explore and generate new ideas that can be developed into products and
services to address needs of the poor.”
And the benefits of SELCO to its clients? Some cite “the significant
savings in energy costs as their primary benefit ... the rest pointed to their
children’s education.” The impact on pollution, meanwhile, “is yet to be
quantified."
As Hande steps back from the company he founded 15 years ago to focus on
other innovations for the poor, SELCO is doing about $3 million in business.
Hande feels that could increase to $10 million in the coming years, but he
believes that “fresh ideas, fresh legs” from the younger leaders are the ones
to take SELCO forward.
Social Vigil explains that Hande hopes to “replicate the SELCO model across India”
and create six centers of innovation for the poor by 2017. And as Business
Today reports, he "wants to reach out to still poorer people, work with
the poorest of the poor. He wants 20 percent of SELCO's turnover this year to
come from families with a monthly income of Rs 3,000 [USD $55] or less."
The UN findings mark SELCO as a truly market-driven enterprise with
sustainable, large-scale impact in rural Karnataka. The hundreds of millions of
Indians who lack energy have every reason to hope that SELCO's many reinventions
will continue.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2013/0115/In-India-SELCO-brings-solar-power-to-the-people?nav=478008-csm_blog_post-leftColRelated
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