Recent Activities
New Team for GVEP International -
December 2007 -November has seen the arrival of four new team members to the GVEP International office in London. Sarah Adams, the CEO has been joined by Anthony Oyo, Product Development Manager, Kavita Rai, Programme Manager, Staale Brinchmann, Finance and Procurement Manager, and Georgia Berry, Communications Officer and Office Manager. Laure Ego works from Paris as Knowledge Management Manager and, Wendy Annecke, based in South Africa, is responsible for Reporting, Monitoring and Evaluation. Read More>
Website update
December 2007 -The GVEP International website is currently undergoing significant development to meet our partners' needs, as highlighted during research undertaken earlier this year. Employing a staged process of development, and test sample groups of real users, the improvements will greatly extend the potential for user interaction with the site, initially focusing on the expansion of access to products, services, funding options, and other partner projects. We will keep you updated on progress and future developments through this newsletter and through the website.
The GVEP International Platform is growing in Guatemala
December 2007 - The GVEP International workshop in Guatemala was carried out on November 30th, 2007. The main objective was to inform, and register as members, individuals and organisations interested in being part of a national platform that focuses on the provision of modern energy services to alleviate poverty in the rural areas. Read more>
GVEP International Wins Funding For East Africa Energy Project
GVEP International is pleased to announce that it has been awarded €4m of funding for a project to increase access to energy services in rural East Africa. The Developing Energy Enterprises Project East Africa (DEEP-EA) will provide crucial support for the development of micro and small energy enterprises providing rural and peri-urban energy services in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Read More>
GVEP International and the Africa Energy Forum
Renewable energy & grid electricity, are they mutually exclusive? How do we encourage the growth of small enterprise or SMEs to generate local economic development? Where do we find the energy to supply new customers ? These questions and much more have been discussed during the Africa Energy Forum session "Power for Peri-urban Communities", chaired by Sarah Adams, GVEP International CEO. Please click here for a summary of this Forum.
World Environment Day : British Government supporting GVEP International
Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for International Development is calling for urgent action on indoor air pollution, which claims 1.5 million lives every year. The British government recognises the enormity of the problem and is supporting of work to combat the problem : "We have also supported Practical Action and the Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP), drawing on their wealth of experience. We know from past experience that small businesses are critical in delivering energy services, especially in rural areas. This is why DFID support GVEP's approach of helping small business. We have agreed a new £4 million programme of support to GVEP to help do this over the next 4 years". Read more>
DFID Announces new Partnership Agreement with GVEP International
(From left to right) Paula Dobriansky, Vitaly Churkin, Peter Davies, Jamal Saghir, Jacqueline Coté -Photo courtesy of IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin)
DFID announced at CSD15 a new programme partnership agreement with GVEP International to provide up to £4m over four years to cover GVEP International's institutional costs over the period 2007-2011. This funding will allow GVEP International to implement its new business plan, focusing on providing energy access funds, technical support and capacity building to SMEs in developing countries. Please click here for Paula Dobriansky (Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs) Keynote remarks during this side event and here for the speech made by H.E. Mr. V.I.Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. Read more about the DFID-GVEP side event at CSD-15 where the announcement was made. Read More>
Project Monitoring and Evaluation – a Learning Session at CSD 15
Tuesday 8th of May, 10 am - 1 pm, Conference room B, CSD 15 - United Nations, NY -
GVEP International led a learning session on project-level Monitoring and Evaluation based on the guide recently developed by the M&EED International working group. Experts from the group - including GVEP International, the French Foreign Ministry and the Ademe (the French agency for the environment and energy efficiency), GTZ, E+Co and USAID explained the main issues encountered in project-level monitoring and evaluation and described the methodologies used in their projects. The event was really well attended and all the presentations are now available on our website. Read More>
GVEP International Activites at CSD-15
April 2007 - The 15th session of the UN’s annual Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD), focusing on energy for sustainable development, industrial development, air pollution, the environment and climate change, will be held between 30 April and 11 May 2007, at the UN Headquarters in New York. GVEP International will be present at this session – please come and support our events detailed below : GVEP High-Level Side event, Project Monitoring and Evaluation – a Learning Session, and visit our stand, where our latest publication - "Partnership in Action" will be presented. Read More>
Proposed Nominations for the Partnership Board
March 2007 - We are pleased to announce that the GVEP Partnership Board, following the recent Board elections, is proposing the nomination of the eight new Board members listed below. Altogether 36 candidatures were received, more than for the last elections in 2005 (32 candidates), and you can view the full list of candidatures by clicking here. The candidatures covered a wide range of experience and expertise and the new members were selected with a view to supporting the implementation of GVEP International's new business plan over 2007-2010 and consolidating existing activities. Because of the high quality of the candidatures received, the Partnership Board has decided to extend Board membership by two seats in order to be in a position to fully benefit from the additional skills and support proposed and which will be necessary in this new and exciting phase of GVEP's development. Read More>
GVEP Partnership Board elections 2007
5 February 2007 - A big thank you to all our Partners for the nominations we have received for potential candidates for the Partnership Board. There was considerable interest in the nominations this year and these will now be considered by a special election committee. A short-list of candidates, selected according to the skills required by the next phase of GVEP International's Business Plan, will be proposed to the existing Partnership Board during February with final nominations being made before the end of March. Read more>
International Working Group launches M&E Guide in Vienna
15 December 2006 - A guide to monitoring and evaluation for energy projects was launched at the recent Vienna GFSE meeting by the Monitoring & Evaluation of Energy for Development (M&EED) International Working Group led by GVEP and EDF. Many energy projects are faced with the challenge of developing reliable, cost effective and credible means for measuring their effectiveness. This Guide proposes a step by step approach to building project-specific monitoring and evaluation procedures. The guide is intended for projects for which the M&E method has not already been determined by a project donor or stakeholder. The guide was developed by the M&EED Group, as a contribution to the progress of energy access projects. Read More>
Russia Pledges to contribute US $30 million to GVEP
July 2006-
The recent G8 Finance Ministers' official statement released on the public G8 website states that "Russia has decided to join other donors by contributing US$30 million to GVEP in order to scale up its work in sub-Saharan Africa". This follows several months of work by some of GVEP's major partners within the framework of the G8 discussions. For the full statement, Read more>
GVEP - The Next Phase of Development
19 June, 2006- GVEP's new Business Plan has now been unanimously approved by the Partnership Board and the first elements of this were presented at CSD 14. GVEP recognises the need to focus and scale up its activities, moving into the next phase of its development, working more closely with its smaller in-country Partners to maximise the local impact of activities. Read more>
GVEP at CSD 14
22 May, 2006- Several Partnership Fair activities and the joint announcement of a GAPFund / Development Marketplace award were some of the high profile GVEP events at CSD 14 in New York. Alongside the official programme, CSD-14 provided an opportunity for an informal exchange of information, experiences and views among participants. GVEP was pleased to support "ENERGIA: Gender Sensitive Strategies for Increasing Access" and "Practical Action: Small Is Beautiful: Making Decentralized Energy A Reality". GVEP was also represented at the UNDP Knowledge Fair, providing an excellent opportunity to highlight some of the work of GVEP partners. Read more>
Small is Beautiful : Making Decentralised Energy a Reality
17 May, 2006-Sarah Adams, GVEP Programme Coordinator chaired thethe side event "Small is Beautiful", which was held at the Commission for Sustainable Development, 8 May 2006 in New York. This event, organized by Practical Action in partnership with GVEP, OLADE and WINROCK INTERNATIONAL examined the role that decentralised energy services can play in getting electricity to isolated areas in developing countries, and how to make such services more viable and sustainable. Read more here or download the full report.