This is a CTP of initiative: INFORSE - Ecoserveis (Spain)
Boom of activities to counter energy poverty.
The boom in activity with energy poverty is due primarily to the press in Catalonia. They sent a press release. The title of the news to be published was: 1,000,000 Catalans will not turn on the heating. It was the winter of 2013. It came out with the title changed. It triggered alarms at the political level. The Bureau of Energy Poverty was created. And participation began. They went from a situation where it was not known to become normal news.
In Barceolna it was accentuated because the mayor came from the platform that battled against evictions. Already they touched the subject. They came from APE which was a citizen movement that became a politicalparty. Podemos and Barcelona Comú colaborated. Ada Colau won in 2015 and became mayor of Barcelona. This person found a healthy treasury. This surplus was allocated to social assistance. A perfect match to energy poverty. They asked for a job insertion plan. They stated the goal of intervening 5000 houses. They began a collaboration with ABD which is a large organization of volunteers that work with social engagement. They had a lot of experience in interventions that required direct contact to citizens. Before the work was limited to the formation of social servers. In 2015, a popular initiative was approved, which is a law to prevent evictions. Law 24 of 2015. This law was drafted by the AcontraPE, which was the name of the political coalition. It came out with strength. It is a law that prevents the cutting of services for homes in poverty.
Spain exhibits an oligopoly in energy. Big companies have benefited from a completely privatized provision of energy. There has been a lot of battle against big business. Before 2007 the problem was denied.
At the level of the entity they had a battery of proposals that they had presented. When the political movement came, they got immediate attention because the relationship was established. The administration knows that Ecoserveis has the knowledge and the capacity. In 2014 and 2015 they create and run a call centre for social service technicians. It has returned to be trending topic because a person died in a fire caused by candles, which he was forced to use because the electricity had been cut.
In the organization the explosion of interest in the winter of 2015 when they are assigned the contract for points of attention to energy poverty and the plan of labor insertion which is a huge project of around to million Euro. With a month and a half of preparation because the 1 of February begins the formation of the agents. They concentrate on doing all the work. Frustrated to see that it could have been done better. The philosophy of the entity changes a little. Responsibilities are no longer assigned internally. They begin to assign responsibilities to others. There are two other projects. At first they sub-contracted through freelance, which allowed for greater flexibility. Allows to deliver the hours without assuming permanent costs. They are people that they previously knew and who were already involved in energy issues. They were not expensive in terms of training. As the organization becomes larger, they begin to think about how to secure a person's annual salary. You start thinking about how you budget things more permanently. Large projects absorb them. Small tasks become freelance. Freelance gets more involved, takes on more responsible tasks, people start to want to have a permanent position. Projects are sought to ensure the funding of the permanent positions.
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