Solutions for a Clean & Green Puerto Rico

ENABLING ECO-FRIENDLY CONSTRUCTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

📍LAS MARÍAS, PUERTO RICO

Plenitud PR is a nonprofit that has spent more than ten years empowering locals in Las Marías and border areas by offering educational agriculture sustainability programs at their farm school. Our grant is allowing them to build eco-friendly cabins so they can increase their capacity to teach more people about sustainable practices while developing an additional source of income for their operations.

addressing toxic waste build-up

📍ISLAND-WIDE IMPACT

Our $7,672 grant funded a battery collection and disposal program devised by Basura Cero Puerto Rico, a local nonprofit that was alarmed by the toxic waste build-up in the island's landfills, waterways and green areas from discarded batteries used after the storm to power lamps, flashlights, fans, and other emergency devices.

In collaboration with local Walgreens stores, the Judicial Branch of the Government of Puerto Rico and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Basura Cero established 29 collection stations across the island where 17,965 pounds of batteries were collected for safe disposal.

SUPPORTING THE ISLAND’S FIRST HYDROELECTRIC COOPERATIVE

📍UTUADO, ADJUNTAS, & JAYUYA

Residents in the interior municipalities of Utuado, Adjuntas, and Jayuya were without power for 8 months. Often, local marginalized communities suffer even more than their coastal counterparts during catastrophes, as help and electricity take longer to arrive. For local residents, a lack of power meant communities could not access basic and routine healthcare services.

To make sure this crisis would not happen again, we teamed up with Unidos por Utuado, Puerto Rico’s first-ever Hydroelectric Cooperative known in Spanish as “La Cooperativa Eléctrica de la Montaña”. This project represents the first steps towards a much bigger goal: providing a reliable source of energy to residents in the mountainous region of Puerto Rico. Our $70,000 grant financed the work of a project coordinator and three photovoltaic consultants (the latter are all women from the immediate communities).

Financing solar panels for a women’s shelter

📍ARECIBO, PUERTO RICO

As too often happens in the wake of natural disasters, incidences of violence against women spiked following the hurricanes. Without a functioning power grid, women's shelters throughout the island did not have electricity or functioning security systems, leaving women and children residents vulnerable and in emotional distress.

We provided a 5kW solar energy system at a women's shelter in Arecibo, a municipality that reported the second highest rate of domestic violence incidents in 2017 (Source: Puerto Rico Police Department). The installed system will continue to provide much-needed comfort and safety to over 30 vulnerable shelter residents during future blackouts or storm impact situations.

INSTALLING ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SYSTEMS

📍VIEQUES, ARECIBO, CAGUAS & BAYAMÓN, PUERTO RICO

We provided a $150,000 grant for the funding of six installations of Resilient Power’s photovoltaic energy systems to provide an alternative and reliable source of electricity for: one in Instituto Psicopedagógico in Bayamón, three locations of Asociación Mayagüezana de Personas con Impedimentos (AMPI), a women’s shelter in Mayagüez, and a fisher village in Punta Santiago, Humacao.