This sixth media workshop of the Smart Villages project took place in November 2016 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. This followed the main regional workshop reported on separately, but to which the journalists were also invited. The general theme of rural development, resilience, and recovery as renewable energy dividends seemed particularly newsworthy in view of the recent floods in Central America and hurricanes in the Caribbean. And reflecting feedback from previous workshops, rural development experts and energy access experts and stakeholders openly welcomed the opportunity to meet with journalists and explain their work,
objectives, and obstacles.
The journalists thus attended for the full three days of the main workshop, and then had a dedicated media-only event on which this is the report. During the event, the journalists were briefed on specialist topics of interest, such as individual technologies and energy access dividends, and available media resources. The majority of journalists also used this opportunity to present and discuss case studies from their own countries on renewable energy penetration and its effects on off-grid communities.
