About us:
Founded in 2006, Solar Cities is a nonprofit organization that works on capacity building in developing countries through an
industrial ecology approach to sustainable developlement. Through green collar education, gender equity empowerment and poverty alleviation we help families develop sensibly scaled technologies for creating
affordable enivonmental solutions at the household level.
Solar
C3ITIES
e.V. is a not-for-profit organization based
in Germany. We work all over the world, particularly
Africa and the Middle East, developing home-scale
sustainable development solutions with,
by, and for families and communities.
Our current focus is on providing low-cost high-efficiency biogas systems and system integration training for "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer" biodigesters at the household and community level. We incorporate in-sink food waste grinders like the "Insinkerator" brand garbage disposal into our biogas systems as the "jaws and teeth" of our "artificial sacred cow" biodigester.
Mission:
To Provide low income families, both nationally and globally, with
safe, clean, climate friendly, hot water, sanitation, light and
microenterprise opportunities.
Who
are We:
Founders;
Executive Director;Dr. T.H. Culhane, Dr. Sybille Culhane
Ahmed
Khalifa: Secretary/Treasure,
Moustafa Hussein, Hanna Fathy, Heidi Fink, Hussein Farag, Joram Samoan, Mike Rimoin: Solar CITIES Innoventors and Practioners
Current Projects:
Soylent Green is People, but Food Scraps are Solar Energy!
We build biodigestors because we see proper utilization of kitchen and toilet wastes as the best way to bring solar energy to the city!
It
is our contention that food wastes, whether in the form of high energy raw table scraps and plate scrapings, or processed through an animal gut, are the most cost effective and reliable
form of stored solar energy. Unlike fossil fuels, which are also stored
sunlight, food waste is climate neutral and, when turned into methane
and fertilizer through a biodigester, produces no harmful toxins or
pathogens and can no longer provide sustenance to mammal, bird or insect
vectors of disease. Unlike direct sunlight, or other forms of transformed solar energy like wind power and hydro power, food wastes are available come rain or come shine, night and day, 365 days a year. And since so much of the world's stored solar energy is accumulated in our cities as uneaten plant and animal parts, left-over and thrown out food scraps and human and animal manures, we believe that any true "Solar CITIES" will transform these substances, now considered liabilities dumped into landfills or discharged into rivers lakes and oceans, into the primary sources of fuel and fertilizer. A real solar city would exhaust all of its organic wastes first before turning to other forms of sunlight, and would save fossil fuels, which are ancient solar capital reserves useful for investing in big infrastructure projects, for last.
It is for this reason that our top priority is helping everybody on earth first make use of their stored solar energy by teaching them how to grind food wastes and tranform them into clean burning biogas for cooking, heating, lighting, refrigeration and electricity generation and nutrient rich soil for growing healthy food and fighting desertification and deforestation.
Philosophy:
By
tapping into the spirit of community cooperation and
extending it to a global scale, experiments in more sustainable
living can be run on a huge scale at a very low
cost and in a way that invites community and stake-holder
participation. By using only off-the-shelf, locally
purchased or manufactured, recycled and ‘found’
materials we strive to give everyone a chance to
take
control of their own destiny as they pursue a dignified
and comfortable path to fully sustainable
development.
The
low costs associated with the Solar CITIES project make it affordable
and scalable and appropriate for microfinancing opportunities. We
work in a modular „build as you go“ fashion. Each dollar spent
adds to the growing capacity of the systems and capacity building in
the communities.
For
example, when you support solar CITIES, every donation has an
important place in the ecology of development:
25
dollars will pay for a local metal worker, welder or plumber to spend
a full day helping us build a renewable energy system.
50
dollars will purchase the glass for solar collectors for three
families
100
dollars will purchase one of the two tanks needed for a family biogas
system
150
dollars will purchase the copper pipes for a family solar hot water
system
200
dollars will purchase the aluminum sheeting , paint, insulation and
plumbing fittings to build a two panel family solar hot water system
250
dollars will purchase the materials an entire single family biogas
system that provides 1 to 2 hours of cooking gas a day
300
dollars will purchase the materials to build a treadle pump so
families without electricity can provide themselves with water
350
dollars will hire a local youth worker for a month to assist her
community in building renewable energy and waste management systems.
400
dollars will provide an airline ticket to bring a Solar CITIES
trained trainer to another African country to train more trainers
450
dollars will purchase the materials for a family biogas system that
provides 3 to 4 hours of cooking gas a day (or can run a gas
refrigerator for 24 hours).
500
dollars will purchase the materials to build and install a full solar
hot water system on a family's roof.
750
dollars will pay the salary of a Solar CITIES expert to spend a week
in a new location starting a project.
1000
dollars will purchase an airline ticket to send a Solar CITIES
trainer to a new location to start a project.
There is a PAYPAL donate button to the right of this post at the top of the sidebar column. Go ahead and click and show your support today!
Because
we TRAIN AS WE BUILD, every activity becomes an educational
opportunity. Thus ever donation is directly contributing to
re-education and capacity building. Beneficiaries pay for their
education through donating extra time and labor to the project by
sharing the expertise they acquired in their own home or community to
others. This way every dollar stretches beyond the borders of any
particular project site.
Vision:
To produce a sustaibable asset-based, low income approach to income
to poverty reduction through job training and hands on productionto
provide capacity building of all the stakeholders involved.
What
is the Problem:
Most
of the energy and water consumption and waste
generation in a household or community occur
in
the kitchen and the bathroom.
• Kitchens
and bathrooms are traditionally female managed
domains so most health risks associated
with
energy, water and waste are incurred by ‘voiceless’
women and children.
• The
technologies associated with energy production, water
supply and waste disposal are traditionally forprofit male
domains that occur outside the household without
consideration for the well being of women and
children in poor communities.
• Solar
CITIES brings these domains together by bringing
sensibly scaled technologies and design
information
for creating household level industrial ecology
solutions to families around the world.
Goals
and Objectives:
• Industrial
Ecology Approach toSustainable
Development
• Asset-based
Approach to Poverty
Reduction
• Stake-holder
Participation Approach
to Urban Planning
• “Green
Collar” Job Training Approach
to Education
• Gender
Equity Approach to Community
Empowerment
• Collective
Intelligence Approach
to Problem Solving
Honoring
Diversity and Lessons Learned
Solar
CITIES works on small
infrastructure issues with
an expertise in
renewable
energy. Solar
CITIES is principally
involved with
‘watergy’
issues that can be
solved using appropriate
technology.
Solar
CITIES trainscommunities
to build small
biogas, wind and solar
systems.
Solar
CITIES conducts outreach
and education workshops
using holistic learning,
multimedia and
edutainment.
Started
by a husband and wife team while they
were living in the slums of historic Cairo,
Solar CITIES was conceived as a way of
working with collective intelligence at the
household
level to solve the daily challenges of
securing basic amenities like clean water, hot
water, energy, food and hygienic waste management.
We take a neighborly ‘barnraising’ approach
to solving global issues and
making the world a better place
The
Solar CITIES approach is to work at the
level of the family, building capacity
through
building relationships. At
Solar CITIES we turn the normal development equation
on its head. We choose to think locally -- i.e. we
think of how to solve problems in our own homes,
in
our own back yards, within our own communities -- with
the faith that by coming up with solutions that are good
for you, are affordable and can be created at home
using
available materials, the best ideas will by themselves
diffuse and spread through personal social
networks
until they have reached the entire world. The key
is to build a network of families and friends and acquaintances
that is blind to nations, cultures, races, religions,
and borders.
With
todays social networking technologies, people now
share information without great effort and news travels
very fast. Solar CITIES takes advantage of this by
working only with people we have gotten to know, and
then expanding the network each time, so that we know
ever more and ever more different people. Many people
talk about the downsides of globalization and urbanization,
but Solar CITIES, cofounded by
a multicultural couple holding doctorates
and specializing in urban planning
and education, sees these two trends
as potential solution generators
Solar
Cities takes advantage of social networking to connect us with
likeminded people and people in need that makes our global network
expand each day.
Due
to the vast migrations of people around the planet, and
our interconnectedness through constant travel and telecommunications,
awareness of each others needs and
mutual problem solving can be vastly accelerated. Multiple
perspectives can brought to bear that vastly reduce
redundancy and wasted resources through needless
trial and error. Through site visits and multimedia
internet communications we have been able to
bring technologies and ideas from India to Egypt and
from
Egypt to California, from Alaska to East Africa and
from Central America to South East Asia.
Solar
CITIES at work around the World
Quotes
from Solar CITIES stakeholders
Mother
in the slums of Cairo: „ It used to take me up to 7 hours to bathe
my 6 children because of the time it took to fetch and heat the
water. We had to boil 20 liters at a time on an open flame and it
was dangerous work. Many children in our community get third degree
burns and some die each year because of scalds, and houses have
burned down, to say nothing of the air pollution using kerosene
stoves generated. Now, because I was able to build my own solar hot
water system on my roof with Solar CITIES, I have 200 liters of safe,
clean hot bath water every day at the turn of a tap. Because the sun
never stops shining here, we know we will never run out of hot water,
and everybody can bathe whenever they like. The burden is off of me
and I can devote more time to studying and learning a trade.“
Young
man in the garbage area of Cairo: „Garbage is my life, because I
am a recycler. But garbage can be very dangerous – my baby niece
was killed by rats that were attracted by the kitchen waste and ended
up in her crib instead. Now that we build biogas systems next to our
homes and on our roofs, the organic waste all goes into the sealed
tank and has no smell. For this reason no rats, dogs, cats, flies or
other disease causing or dangerous animals come around anymore. We
simply don't have smelly garbage near our house or in our streets
anymore. Instead we get all of our cooking gas from our kitchen
scraps. So we've turned a terrible problem into a promising solution
to clean up our city and improve our health and lives.“
GET
INVOLVED!
YOUR
HELP OR DONATION CAN PROVIDE A
FAMILY WITH SAFE AND CLEAN, CLIMATEFRIENDLY AND
INFLATION-RESISTANT COOKING
FUEL, HOT WATER, LIGHT,
SANITATION
AND MICROECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES.
There is a PAYPAL donate button to the
right of this post at the top of the sidebar column. Go ahead and click
and show your support today!
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