Call for volunteers

As the summer season cools off, the Vancouver Chapter is excited to join BCSEA’s provincial leadership and other chapters on 2023 planning. Vancouver’s steering committee has already begun brainstorming for next year, but extends the invite to the rest of the BCSEA community for ideas.

We are looking for volunteers who want to develop their project management, communications, or web development skills by getting involved, planning for and leading our quarterly initiatives! From WISE to Hackathons, pub nights, and speaker events, we want to hear your ideas and what you want to do next year.

Join our Slack community workspace (#around_vancouver and #vanpms channels), and stay tuned for more details on opportunities over the next few months! 

If you’re not yet part of BCSEA’s Slack community, please feel free to reach out: vancouver@bcsea.org 

Updates from Renewable Energy Projects

The Renewable Energy Projects (REP) initiative has continued to build traction, receiving recent donations from our membership to help project partners on the REnA (Renewable Energy in Africa) Project. As part of 2023 strategic planning, the Vancouver Chapter hopes to build on this model providing more Vancouverites with renewable energy and project management experience opportunities.

REP’s main focus for the last 3 years has been working with a project team in Malawi to bring biogas and solar power solutions to their community. For a full summarization of work to date on REnA, see Vancouver Chapter Chair’s blog post on the topic here. 

Does real hands-on experimentation sound exciting? Do you want to help impoverished communities reduce their dependence on fossil fuels while also developing your own career skills? Have a local renewable energy project in mind? The project team is looking for volunteers with interest in business operations, stakeholder engagement, financial modeling, and fundraising. 

Please reach out through the #rena Slack channel or send an email to vancouver@bcsea.org if any of this sounds interesting to you! 

Steering Committee Updates

The Vancouver Chapter Steering Committee saw its biggest structural changes since 2018 this last month. 

Unified by their passion to make a difference in the sustainable energy sector, the Vancouver Chapter has been committed to helping people in the early stages of and looking to begin their sustainable energy careers since the start of 2019.

In addition to supporting the Province on initiatives like the Energy Connections conference and volunteer recruitment, the chapter:

  • Continued monthly socials and meetups that had been introduced by the previous steering committee; 
  • Continued and grew WISE (Women in Sustainable Energy) into not just a wonderful annual event, but also a community of amazing people;
  • Brought the world of startups into our realm, running 2 hackathons and introducing Enfors (Entrepreneurs for Sustainability)
  • Established Renewable Energy Projects (REP) with a pilot project (REnA) in Malawi, fostering learning and industry partnerships;

Vancouver Chapter also created a streamlined volunteer onboarding program, implementing the following common language:

  • Do-acracy – Doers get to choose not only what to be done but they get to choose HOW to do their thing. Resources go to doers. This includes a proper consolidation process. Passive actors don’t get to comment on the process if they fail to do so at the appropriate time (eg. when the process is initially agreed upon).
  • NC;DH (“No Champion; Didn’t Happen”) – If no one is willing to spend time on a task, it will not get done. Every project can have a NC;DH list of the ideas that were thrown but no one has championed.

Now, 

  • Erin Quon is stepping down from her role as Chapter Chair, to get more hands on in a Project Manager & Advisor role. 
  • Pranshu Shelat is officially stepping up as the Interim-Chapter Chair, as the group works together with the Association on BCSEA’s continued ‘back to events and outreach’ plan for 2023. He has been taking on progressively more leadership responsibilities over the past year.
  • Kenny Yuen is continuing his chapter leadership as the chapter’s Vice-Chair & Secretary, while also championing the Renewable Energy Projects initiative.
  • Arman Mottaghi is moving into a Project Manager & Advisor role, helping the association to move forward strategic projects.
  • Annabelle Wong is moving into the Operations Manager role, operating from across the Atlantic to support BCSEA’s volunteer onboarding and management.
  • Selina Liu is stepping down from the committee after leading WISE (Women in Sustainable Energy) for the past 6 years. We wish her all the best in her future endeavours, BCSEA won’t be the same without you Selina!