The Bucharest Hub aims at addressing climate change and sustainability issues from awareness and education by providing a physical solution to act as a trigger for the local community.

Our solution has two parts, addressing both challenges in a holistic way:

1. Install photovoltaic panels on a block of flats rooftops to generate energy,

fueling daily consumption and feeding the extra energy into the grid (hook)

2. Use this to bring neighbors together and build community (change)

The pilot project will be implemented on a block of flats in Bucharest, on 28 Viorele Street, 20 B, Building Entrance B.

We choose this place for three reasons: 1) to be very close by, to monitor and improve the process. 2) It’s a standard block of flats building in Bucharest, built in 1985, with 8 stories and 34 apartments. 3) It has a small group of residents volunteering to rebuild a community around the block of flats.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

People living in the block of flats needs to connect more so that they can mitigate climate change

TARGET GROUP:

Unengaged Neighbors of all ages & backgrounds, especially the older & more vulnerable

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

Creating a series of activities to develop the community and bring people together by installing a PV system on an existing block of flats as a hook and conversational started. Create a public guide to help scale locally and nationally the whole project.

ACTIVITIES:

·        Initial Meetings of Co-creation

·        Meetings with the residents to discuss PV panels’ functioning and benefits

·        Monthly Evening Energy Talks

·        Pop-up Energy Expo in the common space around the stairway ●Guided learning visit for school kids from primary school nr. 97

·        Greening and sustainability activities around the building, such as installing water aerators, selective waste disposal for recycling, urban gardening

·        Neighborhood Sustainability Week: Week-Long programming of community-based events in spaces around the neighborhood organized in partnership with local businesses, non-profits, civic initiative groups, and associations, all exploring solutions for sustainable neighborhoods —from the built environment to citizen initiatives and individual behaviors. A way to extend the pilot initiative to other homeowners’ associations but also to consider more sustainability solutions beyond energy.

SHORT-TERM GOALS / RESULTS:

CO2 emissions reduction: A 10kw system (the one we aim to install on one rooftop) produces around 12.000kw per year, which in Romania means saving around 3.3 tonnes of CO2. In the block of flats we directly impact 34 apartments and 70 people which will still meet after the end of our intervention and help other blocks in the community to meet, connect and engage, becoming the changemakers and connectors we aim to create.

LONG-TERM CHANGE:

As the target group is neighbors in general, our aim is to create micro-communities of people in every city in Romania in the next 20 years, to have no disconnected human. If we do that we won’t only solve the climate problem, but also social ones and health-related. Through creating change, the open guides to do so, the necessary awareness, and doing the necessary policymaking, we are confident we will achieve our goal sooner or later.

AVAILABLE METRICS:

·        1 block of flats in 1 year, 5 in the 2nd year, 10 in the 3rd, 50 in 4th, 100 in 5th.

·        the project will reach 70 direct and 1000 indirect in the first year for the prototype.

·        4 shapers participated in creating the proposal, more will join along the way

·        + 21 meetings in a year in a block of flats

·        + 250,000 EUR fundraising plan for this non-commercial project in the first 5 years.

COLLABORATORS:

·        e-Acumulatori.ro

·        MultiSpace.io