(691.pdf) RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES AND PUBLIC EDUCATION AS KEY ELEMENTS IN SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF BASAISA, EGYPT

摘要

Sustainable community development/solutions can't be pursued as a sectarian initiative. In fact, thespecial importance of the effort outlined in this paper as a program of action lies in itsintegrated/interdisciplinary approach, its attempt to combine renewable energy technology promotionand youth employment, construction of new settlement, poverty eradication, social integration andequality into coordinated and participatory plan of action. The paper reports on the progress of twounique grassroots initiatives: one that started 1974 in a small village at the heart of the Nile-Deltacalled Basaisa (www.google.com/BasaisaVillage ) and one that started 1992 in a new-desertcommunity called New Basaisa (www.google.com/NewBasaisa ) in South Sinai, Egypt. It describesthe renewable energy technologies and public education methodologies used and the approaches thatwork as well as the problems facing its implementation and the achievements to date. Smallphotovoltaic power units were used as multifunction units. Producing electricity for training andeducation, some time for TV, some time for the Friday pray in the Mosque, and other times forproduction activities in small workshops for income-generating activities. Knowing that one source ofenergy can't satisfy all needs in a community, other technologies were used like biogas, wind andSolar heating. The paper discusses the development of the two Basaisa communities to-date as aneducational process. The paper also presents a vision of integrated approach to planned internalmigration for human settlements as new productive eco-desert communities outside the overcrowdednarrow Nile-Valley and Nile-Delta.