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ENERGIA News Issue 2.3, August 1998

News from the Editors

Looking back, looking forward

This is the last issue of ENERGIA News to be published under the existing project. A good moment to look back, and to look forward at the possible future of the ENERGIA network.

ENERGIA was born in 1995 when a small group of women and men from a number of different countries got together and decided the time was ripe to try to build a worldwide network of energy professionals interested in gender and energy. They envisaged that the mission of ENERGIA would be “to engender energy and to empower women, through the promotion of information exchange, research, advocacy and action aimed at strengthening the role of women in sustainable energy development”. The aim was to achieve more effective mainstreaming of gender in energy planning by providing those who were interested in promoting this with ideas, information, materials and moral support drawn from others active in this field.

In 1996, funds were provided by NEDA (Netherlands Development Assistance, formerly called DGIS) to cover the cost of production and distribution of a newsletter, ENERGIA News, of which this issue is the seventh. The newsletter is the most visible and the most far reaching aspect of the network today, and all those who subscribe to it are considered to be network members. Currently it is mailed to about 1000 addresses, and is apparently read by at least twice that number of readers. A recent evaluation has shown that most sections, in particular the Networking and the International Programmes sections and the articles, are carefully read by most readers and are found very relevant and helpful. The majority of the respondents (56%) would like ENERGIA News to continue being published four times a year, while 23%, mainly from the South, would like to see it even more often. Finally, 66% would even be willing to pay for ENERGIA News, in spite of the poor financial situation of many of the Southern organisations that form two-thirds of our readers. All this confirms what some readers have also put in words, that “ENERGIA News means something to me”, ... is educative and practical”, “… is readable, educative and interesting”.
ENERGIA News is now also available on-line with a website accessible to anyone with access to the Internet at www.ENERGIA.org. This has been made possible by co-operation with WIRE, the Worldwide Information System on Renewable Energy, an initiative of the International Solar Energy Society.

Less visible perhaps to most members, but very important for the formation and character of a permanent network, is the existence of the Support Group. This consists of about 30 members who have taken special interest in ENERGIA and who form a think-tank and advisory panel, meeting about once a year to review what ENERGIA has achieved and where it is going.

Other activities carried out by members under the ENERGIA umbrella have mostly been aimed at bringing the gender and energy issue to the attention of a wider group of energy professionals. This has been done in a variety of ways: through the production of training materials (for example at the University of Twente), and by participating as resource persons in gender and energy workshops and at international energy congresses; by offering advisory services; by working with organisations in developing proposals for gender and energy programmes (for example NREL); by lobbying for the inclusion of gender and for the employment of gender experts in energy organisations. It is through these activities that a wider group of energy professionals comes to see that gender is not something separate, of marginal interest - ‘women's business’ in other words -, but an issue of concern in every planning exercise; an issue which is not difficult, not threatening, but essential if sustainable energy development is to be achieved.

We have now come to the end of the first phase in the development of the ENERGIA network and, alas, almost to the end of the funding provided for the newsletter by NEDA. Proposals have been sent out to a variety of donors with a view to continuing what seems to have begun so successfully and to reach out and achieve things that we did not manage to achieve in the first phase.

Of course the continuation of the newsletter, which provides case studies and articles of very practical interest, and which is a wonderful means of South-South information transfer, is a very high priority. Four issues per year can provide readers with a constant stream of new material and, for those who want to share their own experiences with others, a channel that welcomes contributions however large or small.

But in addition to the newsletter, which is produced in Amsterdam, the time has come to decentralise ENERGIA and to create regional branches which could produce local newsletters focusing on regional issues, encourage local members in their own efforts and promote activities which could be accessed by members within the region. It is clear that “Southernisation” has many advantages. It is therefore the aim of ENERGIA, based on comments given at the last Support Group meeting, to support the setting up of three regional branches during the next phase. A workshop jointly organised with ELCI and UNIFEM to be held in Nairobi in early 1999 may perhaps be the catalyst to start a southern and eastern African branch. Once sufficient momentum is built up in the regions and the membership is large enough, it may be possible to establish regional editions and even to transfer the production of the central newsletter to a location in the South.

It is hoped that funding can also be obtained for some other new activities in the next phase: to finance a resource centre, for example, which would gather gender and energy materials (books, bibliographies, articles, case studies, videos, statistics etc) and from where such materials could be ordered directly. Other ambitions include being able to provide at least a limited number of grants to allow members to attend workshops on gender, or to travel to international energy conferences and present papers on gender and energy to this wider audience; perhaps even to make short study trips to observe at first hand what lies behind the success of certain projects designed to help women. All this is intended to help engender energy and empower women. For the purpose of the network is not to exist, but to help to build awareness and capacity among energy planners till the point is reached at which inclusion of gender as an issue is universally considered a part of normal, routine planning in energy development.

We are hopeful that a number of donors can be found who, seeing the success of the first phase of ENERGIA, will be willing to contribute to the continuation and expansion of this living network. This is the last issue of ENERGIA News to be published under the existing funding. We hope, within this phase before the end of this year, to produce an extra issue, which will be a directory of members. Unfortunately, it may be a while before the next full issue appears in your mailbox, funding proposals take time to process, a situation we are sure you are only too familiar with. We very much hope that by early 1999 you can be assured that the regular stream of ENERGIA News will resume!