Village Infrastructure Angels Ltd
, England, United Kingdom
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About
Village Infrastructure Angels (VIA) is a group of concerned individuals and organizations that is helping rural villages in developing countries to access the infrastructure they need to reduce poverty and improve living standards. This includes helping 1 billion people gain access to electricity for the first time, agricultural machinery to reduce manual labour when processing crops by hand, and water pumps for irrigation and drinking water. Recently, our infrastructure mapping tools have proven useful for showing where health infrastructure (clinics/hospitals) are in developing countries, surround population data at household level granularity, and thus the potential overloading likely in various clinics and the costs of strengthening these clinics with improved access to solar energy and vital medical equipment.
website
www.villageinfrastructure.org
Email
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sectors
energy
How is your business helping to solve the health, social, or economic challenges created by COVID19?
One part of our business involves mapping rural populations at high detail (every building) to help form national plans for energy and agriculture in developing countries. This has been shown to be an identical planning framework that can be applied to measuring populations supported by health clinics, and thus gives a detailed understanding of those most at risk of being overloaded if COVID19 reaches their area. Our expertise in renewable energy then can also be used to design solar power systems to ensure the infrastructure needed for these clinics can be planned and costed, built up from a list of critical equipment needed. Partnerships with health experts helps complements our own internal skills, and should these plans turn into actual deployments, we have dozens of partners in such countries that can actually install the equipment and do follow-up O&M. Integrating these near-term solutions into long-term economy-building development plans can also form a major output, so that the infrastructure can be well utilized even after the crisis has passed.
Does your business contribute most to recovery, response, or resilience?
Resilience - we're improving the broader infrastructure for responding to pandemic outbreaks.
What is the stage of your product development?
I have a market ready product/service. I have sold to customers.
What strengths does your team bring? Include skills and personal experience with the problem.
Our team has bring infrastructure and electricity to over 1 million people in over 30 countries in the past 15 years, winning many awards for innovative hardware, software and financial products. Our team has also helped with mapping infrastructure in granular detail for over 100 million people in the past 5 years on a customized cloud-based mapping portal perfect for widespread collaboration. We also have strong skills in liaising with key stakeholders of complex projects, including the World Bank, local governments, social enterprise, investors/funders and others.
What countries do you operate in?
Vanuatu, Indonesia, Honduras, Philippines, Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, UK, Australia, Slovakia, China
Is your company headquartered in a US "Opportunity Zone"?
No

What is an opportunity zone?