Tag: community engagement

Mobile Minigrids – Community Site Survey Report

Smart Villages Research Group and project partners Chemolex surveyed more than 11 remote communities in Central and Western Kenya to find a suitable location for trialling of a mobile minigrid system. The report linked below outlines their key research findings. The Maasai Mara communities around Narok proved most promising, as these were the only ones …

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Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/mobile-minigrids-community-site-survey-report/

Challenging Assumptions through Community Engagement

At Smart Villages Research Group, we truly believe in the importance of a community-led approach. We always start by asking the community to tell us about the challenges they’re facing, through focus groups and service value tests. This helps us ensure that any technology or system we develop will definitely provide value to the community, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/challenging-assumptions-through-community-engagement/

Electricity is not a service…

… in the context of the Service Value Test (SVT), a key tool in the Smart Villages approach which engages community members to uncover their needs and aspirations for the future development of their village. It’s an important early step when we start working with a new community, and the quantitative and qualitative data about …

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Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/electricity-is-not-a-service/

The Service Value Test – what it is and why we use it

The Service Value Test (SVT for short) is a key tool in the Smart Villages approach that we like to use as early as possible in our conversations with communities we are looking to work with. We find it really helpful for the following reasons: It gets us quantitative preference data from community members telling …

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Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/the-service-value-test-what-and-why/

Language and Education Barriers in Community Engagement

The SVRG approach is grounded in community engagement and human centred design, to ensure the systems we install bring real, lasting benefit. Unfortunately, due to language barriers, we are unable to run focus groups ourselves, but rely on our in-country partners to assist with translation, or with running the entire group following training. Our translators …

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Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/language-and-education-barriers-in-community-engagement/