A summer in San Francisco with blueEnergy

By Austen Sybert -- College students have many choices when deciding how to spend their
summers away from school. Work, more school, volunteer, intern or just lay at the
pool are all options, widely varying in their degree of academic enrichment and
rejuvenation. This summer, I interned for blueEnergy and the opportunity provided
a perfect compliment to my formal environmental engineering studies. My
entrepreneurship and management training was accelerated under the supervision
of a fellow environmental engineer, Executive Director Mathias Craig, who has
successfully used engineering in complement with entrepreneurship and passion to
achieve a more equitable and sustainable world.

I knew by committing to my internship with blueEnergy I was not embarking
on developing complex engineering models based on facts that I directly learned back at
school. This transition to a work environment removed from my
environmental engineering studies initially caused some apprehension. Then I
recognized that my internship would utilize my foundation in engineering to diversify my
skill set, ultimately providing greater enrichment than if I remained in my narrow
window of expertise. blueEnergy allowed me to apply my analytic knowledge base
to an innovative business environment.

This summer I helped run day-to-day operations in a small entrepreneurial
office - I planned and implemented the Change Today Empower Tomorrow
campaign tactics, which raised over $10,000 in 4 weeks - I coordinated
communications and developed data management solutions with the blueEnergy
global community via data collection, social media and email outreach - I problem
solved blueEnergy's organizational structure with two co-founders, Mathias and
Guillaume Craig, which was definitely the highlight of my time with blueEnergy.
My summer spent with blueEnergy was a highly valuable way to compliment
my formal engineering studies by diversifying my skillset. I am now looking forward
applying my broader range of skills to enhance my final year of studies at Johns
Hopkins University and my future career. 

Intern, Austen Sybert takes in a Giant's game on his last day interning with blueEnergy. 

Thanks blueEnergy!

blueEnergy Committed to the Environment

By Kenia Joiner and Chris Sparadeo -- As a member of the Municipal Environmental Commission, blueEnergy has recently participated in different activities in celebration of international Environment Day. These activities were developed in conjunction with members of the environmental commission including governmental institutions such as MARENA (Nicaraguan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources), MAGFOR (Nicaraguan Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry), MINED (Nicaraguan Ministry of Education), FUNCOS (Nicaraguan Sustainable Harvest Foundation), FADCANIC (Foundation for the Autonomy of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua), the Municipality of Bluefields, and the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) and the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast (URACCAN).

Reforestation “El Pool Natural Reserve”
Reforestation in the El Pool Natural Reserve took place on the 26th of May 2012, with the goal of planting 200 Mahogany trees in the area. Situated on the outskirts of the neighborhood “19th of July”, El Pool has historically been exploited for its natural resources, namely trees and rocks. Its transition into a Natural Reserve in 2009 has diminished levels of degradation while allowing for many of the native flora and fauna to reclaim their rightful terrain. Participants in the reforestation efforts included MARENA, MAGFOR, the Municipality of Bluefields, BICU, Guardabarrancos and blueEnergy.

Chris Sparadeo (r) helps plant mahogany trees at El Pool

Inter-University Forum on Solid Waste Management
In efforts to sensitize university students to the importance of solid waste management, blueEergy presented its experience with biodigestion to an audience of around 60 students, professors and governmental officials at the BICU University. blueEnergy’s Gilles Charlier, Renewable Energy Program Coordinator, shared his insights on the subject in his presentation titled “Biodigesters for Organic Solid Waste Management.” Charlier described blueEnegry’s current involvement in using small-scale biodigestion as cooking fuel as well as its larger scaled proposal to implement a biodigester at the municipal slaughterhouse to offset its electricity usage.

Gilles Charlier presents bE's experience with biodigesters

Municipal Fair: Exhibition and Craft Competition with Recyclable Material
Artistic Expression! On the 7th of July, students from BICU and URACCAN universities came together at Plaza Caracol in Reyes Park to present their crafts fashioned completely out of recycled materials. Who said garbage is waste? The creativity of the young university students was in its highest expression, with a myriad of articles ranging from handbags made of reutilized plastic, recycled paper cards to plastic bottle brooms. Students also gave public workshops in recycled paper pressing and jewelry making. After a day of fierce competition, it was BICU who took home the bacon for their work with recycled papers. Second place went to the students of URACCAN and their plastic/aluminum hybrid creations. Congratulations to the 4th and 5th year ecology students for their participation, creativity and support of recycling efforts in Bluefields. Alongside the students, the womens' municipal compost cooperative showcased and sold its high-grade compost generated from the municipal landfill. blueEnergy was in attendance to show its support for the recycling initiatives and to demonstrate its projects with renewable energies.

Exhibition and craft competition with recycled materials

Alongside the students, the coordinating members of the event had a strong presence at the fair. The Municipality of Bluefields, MARENA, and of course blueEnergy presented work to the public.

Check out more photos!

Staff Spotlight: Accountant Sandra Pavón

By Angela Cacciola -- Three years ago, Sandra Pavón managed blueEnergy’s finances on an excel sheet, where she manually entered each transaction. Since those early days, blueEnergy has grown, expanding its local administrative staff from two to six. Today, as the head accountant at age twenty-one, Sandra trains co-employees and writes accounting procedures which revolve around bE’s newly acquired accounting program, Ares.

Fortunately, Sandra doesn’t have a lot of difficulties as the head account because as she says, she’s “been a bE accountant since the beginning, and know[s] how bE works.” However, she favored switching to the accounting program more suitable for conditions in Nicaragua that has empowered the sustainability of the local administration staff. Although blueEnergy acquired an accounting system in between Sandra’s arrival and now, it was in English and all technical support was through the US. This new program has a manual in Spanish and technical support in Managua, making it easier for internal education and problem solving.

Native to Bluefields, Sandra not only works for blueEnergy, she also attends BICU university as a full-time student. This year, she completes her third of a four-year civil engineering program, which she attends three nights during the week. Next year, she begins a five-year business administration program on Saturdays. These classes will help her “understand things like contracts between blueEnergy” and other organizations. “Learning more about the technical part [also] enables me to better understand the administrative part which is largely based around the finances of technical projects,” Sandra says. She also hopes to use her technical knowledge to work with blueEnergy’s energy or water teams in the future.

Sandra enjoys accounting, everything that has to do with analysis, finances, how to improve processes and economics..Her time spent in the administration office makes her work more interesting. The relations between women are good and she also benefits from the culture exchange inherent to working with international volunteers.

(L - R) Sandra with co-worder Yarlenne

“When I started, bE wasn’t well known here in Bluefields because a majority of the work was done in remote communities in the RAAS (southern autonomous region). Everyone would ask me what bE does. Now, with all of the contracts bE has done, especially all the work in Bluefields, it’s given itself to be better known. I believe that in the future, in the next five years, bE will be a big NGO that offers services in more communities, and eventually has the capacity to do projects in the RAAN (northern autonomous region) as well.”