Thirty years ago, an energy revolution quietly got underway in the northern highlands of Nicaragua. In the 1980s, the international community was focused on the fight between the US-backed Contra rebels and the democratic socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) for control over the country. At the same time, communities that had repeatedly been bypassed for modern infrastructure development organised to form the Association for Rural Development Workers (ATDER-BL), with the goal of providing their own electricity.
ATDER-BL has a solidarity-driven, community-focused development model that was designed collectively – through trial and error and numerous rounds of consultation – by local engineers, builders and community members. All of the association’s projects prioritise local leadership, collective ownership and capacity building. ATDER-BL designs and installs small-scale hydroelectric generation plants, which are in turn managed, operated, partially financed and maintained by the users. Local participation has been one of the most important factors in the association’s impressive success rate in electrifying mountainous regions too isolated for connection to the national grid, as well as in the sustainability of these community projects.