Masters of Health Magazine May 2018 | Page 27

Recipients of the clean energy systems will be schools, hospitals, clinics and other facilities already making a difference in people’s lives, and where their good work could be greatly enhanced by access to clean renewable energy.

The “50 by 50” initiative grew out of discussions with Dan Bates, CEO of ImpactPPA, a decentralized energy platform managed on the Ethereum network. We are honored to announce that our first installation will be on Edna Adan Hospital in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Through this effort we are not only providing the hospital with clean energy, we are acknowledging Edna Adan’s life’s work and her commitment to bettering the lives of her people in Africa. This joint project targets a place where the human health is among the worst in the world—where one in 11 children die in infancy every year and nearly 4,000 women die in childbirth.

On the roof of the Edna Adan Hospital, ImpactPPA will be installing a hybrid wind and solar system to provide affordable, reliable energy, allowing monies currently spent on acquiring fuel to be channeled directly into patient care. Clean reliable energy saves money and literally saves lives. The project aligns with the UN Sustainable Energy for All goal. The UN goal seeks to provide universal access to clean, sustainable energy by 2030 with a specific focus on health care centers as a first priority. This goal is especially important in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where only 28% of health care facilities surveyed report having reliable access to electricity. Electricity access is crucial to the operations of these facilities both for powering essential medical devices such as mammograms and electrocardiograms and for ensuring refrigeration and proper storage for vaccines and other medicine.

EDN hopes that the success of our first project with ImpactPPA will become the launchpad for continuing our work together and identifying other worthy projects and partners around the globe. Moving forward, this initiative will not only showcase an emergent technology, but also have real, quantifiable impacts on people who need clean energy.

EDN’s mission is to protect the environment so that all people may live a safe and healthy life, now and in future generations. We work every day through a combination of education, public policy, and consumer campaigns to protect the Earth and demonstrate that there are alternatives to the status quo. Clean energy and energy security for all people are goals that Earth Day Network and ImpactPPA share, and we will demonstrate our commitment not just with words but with action.

This new partnership will move us closer to those goals and will balance some of the inequities in our global energy paradigm. Promoting social justice by empowering communities has long-ranging effects. Healthier people are more able to advocate for themselves and we need every person on Earth to be a strong advocate for a clean environment.

Earth Day Network Helps

Edna Adan Hospital in Somaliland