President Luis Abinader inaugurated the first self-sustainable solar community in the country, built in Sabana Yegua Viejo, Azua province, under a public-private partnership.
According to the press release, with this initiative President Abinader continues to bet on renewable energy as an alternative to improve the living conditions of the people and protect the environment.
“What I am seeing here is that this is a model of social, economic and integral development of a community,” said the president.
He added that this is a model that should be taken as an example to be replicated in other communities, in that sense, he pledged to give all the government’s support.
“What remains to be finished here, five houses and a church, the government will give the resources to the Habitat organization to build them,” he announced.
Abinader congratulated the community of Sabana Yegua Viejo, saying that “this social connection, this unity of purpose that you have assumed is the direct path to development”.
The project, which had an investment of US$ 1,400,000,000, had the cooperation of the Government through the Ministries of Environment and Natural Resources, Economy, Planning and Development, Agriculture, Energy and Mines, Edesur and the Single System of Beneficiaries (Siuben).
The communiqué indicates that the community leader Alejandrina De Jesús, expressed that it is an achievement for the community to receive President Abinader, since it is the first time that a president visits them.
De Jesus thanked the government for bringing what the community of Sabana Yegua Vieja needed for years, to live with dignity.
“You don’t know how hard it is not to have access to a toilet, drinking water and electricity,” said De Jesús.
It was co-financed by the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB Lab) Innovation and Clean Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development, executed by the Nature Power Foundation, private companies, non-profit institutions and the United Nations Program for the Dominican Republic, among others.
The Nature Power Foundation executed the “Nature Village” project, a self-sustainable and replicable community model.
The project provides access for the first time to energy, drinking water, decent ecological housing, entrepreneurial opportunities and access to technology, to benefit 50 families that have been living in the area for more than 40 years without basic services.
“We are doing this together with the Foundation for the Development of Azua, San Juan and Elías Piña, with the objective of accompanying them in the process of transformation towards self-sustainability,” said Laura Rojas, founder and executive director of the foundation.
She added that Nature Village is a unique project of its kind and seeks to close development gaps in the provision of basic services, developing an open data platform that will use the Internet of Things (IoT) to correlate socioeconomic and demographic indicators, images and maps.
“This will make it possible to focus and make public and private investments in rural communities more efficient through consumption data and behavioral changes generated by the platform developed with this project,” said the executive.
The event was attended by the Minister of Agriculture, Limber Cruz; Juan Garrigó, administrative vice-minister of the Presidency; Miguel Coronado, IDB representative; Inka Mattila, UN representative; Ángela Grey Pérez, governor of Azua; Lía Ynocencia Díaz, senator of Azua; Alejandrina de la Cruz, community leader and Monsignor José Dolores Grullón, who blessed the project.
