The Koru Foundation
The Koru Foundation is a UK-based charity dedicated to providing renewable energy solutions to tackle energy poverty and climate change in developing countries. We support community managed, small-scale renewable energy projects which provide simple, sustainable, clean energy solutions which can be accessed by the whole community.
The Koru Foundation works closely with local partners to develop suitable projects. In our nearly 3 years of existence we have built relationships and worked in partnership with many local grassroots organisations as well as a small group of international charities including Oxfam, Practical Action and Trocaire. We work with our partners to ensure that projects are well designed, managed, monitored and evaluated and build their capacity to increase the number of projects they can deliver and to expand the types of renewable technologies they can access; we provide a link for local partners to the business and technical expertise of the UK and European Renewable Energy industry, as well as programme funding.
44 Grand Parade
Brighton
East Sussex
BN2 9QA
United Kingdom
01273606685
Ethical and Environmental Policy
The Koru Foundation has had a profound positive effect on a number of communities across the developing world who were in desperate need of clean and reliable energy and as a result we have established programmes in Latin America, East Africa and the Indian Sub-continent. One of our first projects was a small scale wind energy project in the rural village of Phakel in Nepal, providing clean, renewable electricity for lighting and powering appliances in households and energy to a school. This has had an immediate positive impact on the quality of life of the villagers as well as extending schooling hours enabling adult literacy lessons to take place in the evenings, benefiting the future development of the community.As well as improving education provision, we also look to improve the economic situation of the communities we work with. For example, we funded a micro-hydro power station in the isolated Peruvian communities of Alto Bolognesi, El Patino and Chorro Blanco to provide grid quality electricity to approximately 185 families. The project boosted economic activity by allowing the communities to process its dairy products which enabled them to take new products to market.
All of the communities in which we work are involved in the design of our projects, from inception to installation, operation and maintenance. We teach the local community how to maintain and repair the technology, so once the project is finished, they will be able to manage the system without external support. Typically a gender balanced committee is formed to manage the project, mobilise the community labour and arrange workshops and assemblies. The committee is also involved in the long term management, maintenance and finance of the project.
