Community Capacity Building: A Renewable Energy Workshop as an Investment in Sustainable Businesses in the Galapagos Islands

With renewable energy penetration rapidly increasing worldwide in response to climate change concerns, efforts must also consider teaching and educating communities about its principles and how they can take advantage of these resources. This paper aims to show how building local capacity in renewable energy and developing a renewable energy program can provide education and training to students and youth in the Galapagos Islands. The goal will be to train the youth, starting with basic electrical principles and culminating with how to design and install renewable energy systems on the islands and build productive enterprises using these resources. The program was designed to reach the youth in the Galapagos Archipelago. High school students and young people interested in renewable energy were the primary target recruitment for the program. Twenty Santa Cruz Island students participated in the program’s first iteration. The design and implementation of workshops are described in this paper. Two surveys were conducted before and after the workshop to evaluate the knowledge improvement related to renewable energy and off-grid PV solar systems. The survey results show that the participants initially had a limited understanding of renewable energy technologies. Thus, educating the community about renewable energy and solar PV systems contributed to promoting environmental awareness and building capacity towards clean and sustainable electricity generation and solar energy resources in the Galapagos Islands.