COmmunity Living Lab

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognized the importance of access to basic services, in a world where everyone has an opportunity to live a life in dignity, while preserving our planet. Yet, billions of people live today without access to basic services like electricity, clean cooking fuels, safe water, or education. What does it exactly mean? How are the living conditions in rural marginalized communities?

Together with our partner HEDERA, we want to overcome barriers to sustainable development through transparent and insightful indicators to assess, monitor, report and share!

Communities like Pueblo Viejo struggle daily due to the lack of employment, cultural and territorial limitations that impede them to thrive within their ecosystems. We propose a collaborative mechanism based on living laboratories. With the provided tools, we identify their needs and measure real social and environmental impacts. Our solution can be applied globally to ensure sustainable, resilient communities.

The community we work with displays multidimensional challenges, likely to pose unsuspected risks in the future. Characterized by a fragile ecosystem, Pueblo Viejo and vast communities worldwide lack reliable water and energy access, negatively influencing economic opportunities. Besides, past colonialism and conflicts resulted in collective psychological trauma in the area. Due to systematic oppression, communities like ours are still marginalized and left behind. Financial aid is transferred but does necessarily contribute to improving their living standards.

Our solution entails a bottom-up process of data collection because the best source to collect information are the people themselves. This process is continuous rather than static and integrates the whole landscape of existing actors to create collaborative spaces. We understand one size does not fit all, this solution is context-adaptable and can be used to assess the needs of vulnerable communities worldwide.

Our solution entails a collaborative model to build a sustainable and resilient learning environment in Pueblo Viejo. It is inspired by the research approach of living laboratories that combines knowledge and innovation to address societal needs as a response to current challenges*.

COmmunity living labs are:

• Multidimensional: re- identification of the local territory based on economic, ecologic, societal and cultural aspects (Data collection using HEDERA)

• Educational: important subjects work parallelly to the needs of the whole environment (adaptation to educational curriculums, workshops)

• Innovative learning mechanisms through continuous capacity building and training (on-site with local schools and teachers, digitally with HEDERA).
  

• Inclusive and diverse: all individuals and parties are welcome! Some of them include the municipality of Pueblo Viejo, public entities, NGOs, private institutions and companies, civil initiatives, academia and research institutes.

• Participative: facilitation of dialogue and knowledge exchange between stakeholders (Open-discussions in facilitated spaces, meetings, conferences)

• Solution-oriented: to tackle current barriers
  

• Empowering: new opportunities, enhances local initiatives

Other tools: blogs, podcasts, journal articles, open-access literature repository

*Schneidewind et al., (2018). Structure matters :real-world laboratories as a new type of large-scale research infrastructure: a framework inspired by Giddens' structuration theory. Gaia-ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 27, 12-17.

Target population

Pueblo Viejo in the department of Magdalena is one of the municipalities with the highest poverty rates in Colombia. It has about 33,000 inhabitants, most of whom live from traditional fishing, arts and crafts and informal trade. The municipality, along with the districts of Tasajera, Isla del Rosario, Palmira and Bocas de Cataca, lack basic services such as drinkable water, electricity, sewage systems, and proper waste management, causing wastewater and trash to be dumped into the Grand Marsh of Santa Marta. This deteriorates the ecosystem characterized by mangroves and affects fishing activities, on which the majority of inhabitants depend. To it, the lack of opportunities for income generation and unemployment affect the quality of life of the families in this municipality.

Besides poor infrastructure and fragile ecosystems, issues like social exclusion in decision-making, malnutrition, low educational levels and family violence were indicated by previous studies. Being one of the first towns to be colonized in Colombia, communities faced civil unrest, battles and even massacres, yet hard-working and perseverance remains in the people. Our solution integrates social and cultural dimensions to explore the extent of these impacts on their environment to identify priorities to focus on. 

Our partner organization - HEDERA Sustainable Solutions

Understanding the needs of the population, beyond national statistics or studies focusing on population samples, is crucial to achieving sustainable development without leaving anyone behind. Marginalized communities are the most vulnerable to be left behind, even though the inclusion of all communities has been proclaimed as one of the main principles in the Agenda 2030. Despite the growing awareness of sustainable development topics, the monitoring of progress at the household level remains a major challenge for the research, public, and private (investors, NGOs, financial institutions, and small and medium enterprises) sectors.  To overcome the challenges in Pueblo Viejo, HEDERA provides the tools to develop our solution.

Needs Assessment: Rejuvenating Pueblo Viejo, Colombia

Rejuvenating Pueblo Viejo is an initiative of the University of Magdalena Chair of Sustainability started in 2019 in which students develop skills in sustainability and innovation. They focus on social, economic, and environmental fields. Since their involvement, they have already interacted with the community and committed to this project. The engagement of the community is taken into account  by working closely with various stakeholders of the community. One of the results include environmental education initiatives on waste disposal and mangrove conservation that are promoted among the youth. 

Co-developing solutions to improve access to electricity 

This follow-up project of six months (April-September) takes place within the framework of the ASA Program implemented on behalf of the Ministry for Economic and Development (BMZ). Together with HEDERA, the Technical University Berlin, Impact-R, the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS),this project has been supported by an international and interdisciplinary team to further assess the needs of Pueblo Viejo. By aiming multiple milestones to establish a way out of energy poverty, this project phase will evaluate indicators such as energy use patterns, sociodemographic, productive activities, and energy justice.

To socialize this project goals, an online discussion with several community members active in local NGOs, cultural spaces, local administration and science was organized. They told us what their perspectives are, what the problems are. Therefore, we gathered their perspectives to build COmmunity living labs: to co-create solutions with Pueblo Viejo. It consists of a methodology of data collection, long-term monitoring and training with the advantage that it can be adapted to the global pandemic.

Using HEDERA's tools, one energy access survey at the household level will be conducted with local school students after previous training on the topic. Our Team in Colombia will proceed by reaching approximately 400 households, both in the center and the periphery of the municipality. A second survey on sociocultural aspects with school teachers aims to collect their ideas for the development of our solution. By facilitating open spaces of dialogue, our solution will improve local cooperation and ensure stakeholder engagement. 

COmmunity living lab acts as a knowledge multiplier by integrating existing initiatives to raise awareness of community needs and highlight the importance of the biodiverse ecosystem.

The fishermen confirmed that their quality of life declined further during the COVID-19 pandemic and are very enthusiastic to cooperate with us. Building on positive experiences of community members with our preliminary work,
Pueblo Viejo agrees our solution will improve working conditions
while contributing to the conservation of the marsh, and to the
responsible management of solid waste. In turn, this will promote and improve income, climate regulation and food provision. 

Communities like Pueblo Viejo, who live in rich but vulnerable ecosystems, need prosper solutions entailing a shared vision of their whole territory with strengthened cooperation and coexistence for a better tomorrow. Current projects focused on education, infrastructure, fishery, tourism, and commerce should be supported, efficiently managed and sustained to avoid this "space of abandonment" perceived by local populations. We aim to provide a system of negotiating through dialogue, empowerment and increased capability with the facilitated tools provided by HEDERA. Our solution expects this year to reach about 1000 people, up to the entire community  in the future.

By giving Pueblo Viejo the space of a living laboratory to understand beliefs, and  experiences, we foresee to drive collective action and partnership. The development of community-driven models like ours pinpoints scalable solutions to ensure an inclusive, sustainable future.

As our solution is facilitated by HEDERA, we strongly align with the goal of achieving sustainable development. This means fairly without leaving anyone behind. Household by household we can reach up to whole communities and assist those who need the most. With the provided tools, we want to propose solutions for marginalized communities. The assessment of their needs and quality of life requires a holistic approach, by working with and in the community. With shared goals and through collective knowledge, our solution create action and bridge context-related differences and issues.

COmmunity living labs trigger local empowerment, intersectionality, and partnership. If we share a detailed picture, we can think and contribute to solutions. This innovative mechanism aids to overcome multiple barriers ranging from a lack of public services, poor economic activities, social and cultural oppression and unclear formulation of strategies.

Opening opportunities and creating spaces of collaboration means being catalytic.

Estimations:

• Current number of people our solution currently serves: 400

• Number that our solution will serve in one year: 1200

• Number our solution will serve in five years: 6000

Monitoring and reporting at the household level

For the data collection, HEDERA provide us with energy access surveys based on the Multi-Tier-Framework (MTF), to track the fulfillment of five specific indicators that measure the progress toward SDG 7: affordable and clean energy. These include: affordability of energy, reliability, quality, legality, safety and availability. 

A similar methodology was introduced by the Joint Monitoring Program of the UN with respect to SDG: access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene, called the WASH ladder.  Similarly to MTF for SDG7, the JMP WASH ladder characterizes access to clean water and sanitation, as well as hygiene practices, based on quality of the service, availability, and safety. 

Building our solution

To establish COmmunity living labs, collaboration with research and academic institutions was essential for us. We work with a wide network of practitioners in multidisciplinary fields to:

• Address better indicators for SDG 1 no poverty, SDG decent work and economic growth, and SDG 11 sustainable communities.
  

• Analyze accurately with prediction algorithms

• Integrate different data sources/ technologies

• Efficiently provide research results to the private sector 

• The involvement of academia is important in policy-making and re-formulation of current policies.

The energy survey conducted in Pueblo Viejo included additional questions to ensure the needs are heard and considered in energy supply issues and to  further develop our solution. Topics addressed include: energy justice, impacts in income generation, electricity theft, social norms, environmental perception, participation in decision-making, infrastructural conditions, waste management. 

The solution concept was started by the University of Magdalena. Since 2019 together with HEDERA and its partner institutions (TU Berlin, Impact-R, IASS) the concept was further developed this year within the framework of the ASA Program, a binational cooperation between Colombia and Germany. This project phase focused on the implementation of our solution and counts with four members, who received funds  of the Federal German Ministry  of Economic Cooperation and Development for six months of full-time research support.

• 4 full-time employees

2 in Berlin, Germany,
2 in Magdalena, Colombia

• 2 part-time contributors each in Colombia and Germany

We are a unique team of young professionals with interdisciplinary backgrounds and strong motivation. What distinguishes us from other teams is the fact that so far, we have been working together virtually due to the Covid pandemic. Moreover, we are a binational cooperation between Colombia and Germany, striving to establish long-term research cooperation between our corresponding institutions. Our Colombian team members (3 out of 5) have strong ties with community members after already interacted with various local stakeholders the last few years. This step is essential to gain access to the community and build our trust with them. This position enables us to create a unique implementation methodology which provides a space where the community will be listened and the ventures to enhance rather than only proposing an idea.

Our backgrounds in industrial and sanitary engineering, environmental education, ecology and environmental planning, psychology, and statistics complement each other. Besides, each team member has a strong interest in global interdependencies and collaboration. We think that these backgrounds provide us with excellent seed and the necessary care to plant and achieve long-term cooperation.

We are a diverse, multinational team, that fulfills the diversity of vision of MIT. We have a strong emphasis on low-hierarchical communication processes and the reflection of our own power positions. Likewise, we aspire to communicate on the eye-level through open communication, non-violent and the inclusion of all our different backgrounds. During our team meetings, we opted to organize our decision-making processes in a consensual manner, listening to the position of every team member.  The philosophy of not leaving anyone behind is extremely important for us, as together we can achieve more. To establish a welcoming and appreciative atmosphere with our team is one of our values. 

We know that our individual behavior contributes to the energy we transmit to collaborators and the community.

At the beginning of April our Team in Berlin was given the opportunity to take part of this project in Colombia. With various cultural backgrounds involved in this project, we have been able to learn every day from an interdisciplinary and open team in Colombia. Since our commitment, it is clear to us that we will do anything to help communities like Pueblo Viejo. This project is not to meant stagnant, rather a continuous process. Together, we want to become solvers and reach similar cases and grow to larger scale. Only together, we can overcome numerous barriers within public and private institutions, specially in developing countries. The next obstacle to overcome is to aid those institutions with innovative tools for data collection, like HEDERA, to tackle inefficient tracking by providing an information bank that  characterizes local populations. With this support and the commitment of multiple participants previously involved, we ensure reliable and safe energy access in the future. Our progress will be measured, with action-driven research that can be spurred with the support of MIT Solve. Being part of the program aligns with our principle of building a research community to scale up together with a renominated expertise in different fields. Therefore, taking part of worldwide Solver team will theoretically and practically sustain this project, open doors to more opportunities, and strengthen this partnership we are seeking for.

Human Capital: we want to strengthen existing talents of the Municipality and engaged stakeholders that would like to support our solution. To enhance qualified professionals in the Municipality to work with our solution.

Business model: mechanisms for community tariffs for public services, proper business models for fishery, tourism, arts and crafts.

Financial: to build and improve the lack of infrastructure in Pueblo Viejo (network system, electricity wiring, water, sanitation, roads, health institutions, highways, etc.). For commercialization: cold chain for food products: fish and seafood.

We see that this project involves a collaborative model to solve identified challenges by specific rural communities. For this reason, partnering with RETOS would help us answer the question of: how to articulate academic research with real problems of the community and the region?

Futhermore, in Pueblo Viejo, there is a significant number of informal fishermen, artisans and other merchants that do not have access to the internet or are formally documented by the municipality. This reality is similar to the Nigerian business initiative Pokets, they can support us with a scalable model to apply it with our solution as part of the solidary and collaborative economy model to be proposed in the future. 

Within the framework of our project in Pueblo Viejo, Colombia together with HEDERA Sustainable Solutions we want to provide sustainable energy access for the local population, the main hinder that impedes community development.

The needs and demands of women must be listened as the majority stays home with the responsibility of taking care of their family. But how is this possible without safe, reliable energy and the needs beyond? How can we help them with those daily challenging tasks? We want to conduct a survey and integrate the important role of women in our solution due to the lack of awareness about women's needs. By creating social awareness about female empowerment in the leadership processes in the municipality, female needs and current issues at all ages will be listened to further include them in our living laboratory. The Innovation Women Prize can assist our solution to include in the needs assessment, target indicators dedicated for women.

Our solution team works with multiple fishermen and environmental organizations. The Minderoo Priz to End Global Overfishing will assist our living laboratory to further develop solutions in the future, such as:

1. the monitoring of the environment together with the fishermen in Pueblo Viejo (illegal mangrove deforestation, overfishing, waste disposal)
2. to improve the supply chain of existing fish and sea fish products

With the support of HEDERA and the provided tools, the Al Humanity price will be used to:

1. Support action-based research through the development of coastal rural community indicators that were identified with this project.

2. Include other communities in the vicinity to build more living laboratories in the region.