Sudan: ‘Making a Better World’ with Electricity
American co-op volunteers, NRECA International Programs win major award
By Victoria A. Rocha, Electric Co-op Today; June 5, 2009 Vol. 15, No. 20

For 20 years, Southern Sudan made international headlines for two civil wars that killed an estimated two million people, displaced another four million and devastated its countryside before ending in 2005.

Recently, however, Africa’s largest country won recognition for a more positive, life-affirming legacy: a program that started an electric co-op from scratch with the know-how and resourcefulness of 15 American co-op volunteers, NRECA’s International Programs and funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The program, the “Electrification of Yei, Southern Sudan,” was recently selected by the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership as the Overall Winner in the Developed Nations category of the “2009 Associations Make a Better World” awards program.

“Your program truly embodies the spirit of the [awards campaign], which seeks to recognize outstanding examples of associations who make a significant contribution to societies and economies worldwide,” association officials wrote in a May 18 letter announcing the award.

Vivek Talvadkar, senior vice president, NRECA International Programs, believes it’s the first time an NRECA international project has won an award of this stature. He plans to send Ingrid Hunsicker, the foundation’s manager, to ASAE’s annual meeting of its 22,000 members in Toronto to accept the award later this summer.

The award application, submitted by Hunsicker, emphasizes the volunteers’ role in establishing the Yei Electric Cooperative and training its staff and its board of directors over a three-year period.
And volunteers are still traveling to Yei, to expand the co-op’s infrastructure and educate personnel on board and administrative issues.

The volunteers, mostly lineworkers who spent three to four weeks in Yei, have quite a story to tell.

“When I got there, there was still a war going on,” recalled Ashley Johnson, training coordinator at Horry Electric Co-op, Conway, S.C., who was one of Yei’s first volunteers in 2005. “My plane landed on a dirt runway, and I saw soldiers on the runway.”

“The whole power system had been destroyed by the war. There were mass graves and burned-out tanks,” he said, adding that he heard gunshots at night while in his grass-roofed hut.

Because there were no trucks or booms, “everything was done by hand,” said Jamie Conrow, a lineworker at Boone Electric Co-op, Columbia, Mo., who volunteered in Yei last year.

Today, Yei is a transformed place. Now a self-sustaining co-op, YECO, as it’s called, serves more than 17,500 people and plans to expand.

A staff of 20, formerly unskilled laborers and ex-guerilla fighters, runs the co-op. Crime rates have dropped, and locals are starting restaurants and other shops, the award application noted.
While the award does not bestow any funding upon the project, Talvadkar said the honor in itself is noteworthy.

“It’s a recognition of the role our volunteers and international programs staff played. And that’s worth more than money.”

Steve Baumgartner, Boone Electric Co-op (far left) and local lineworkers use brute force to erect a pole as they build from scratch an electric co-op in Yei, a town in Southern Sudan. Photo Credit: Paul Dow