Solar Diversity Champion Awards 2023

REScoop.eu has prioritized gender equality and justice in its activities from the beginning. Its statutes require the appointment of a director and deputy of different genders to represent the legal entity, and in 2020 REScoop.eu, as a sector organization of Cooperatives Europe, adopted the Charter of commitment on equality between women and men in cooperatives. 

In 2021, REScoop.eu also launched a Gender Power working group to identify the needs and challenges faced by energy cooperatives and to provide the space for reflection and exchange on good practices and tools that energy communities can apply to diversify their governance and membership and reflect the principle of gender justice in their overall operation. In 2023, the REScoop.eu Board signed the Ambition statement of the Gender Power working group in the context of its Annual General Assembly. 

REScoop.eu also focuses on addressing energy poverty and broadening social inclusion in energy decision-making paying particular attention to communities in vulnerable situations and the existence of structural inequalities linked to, among others, to race, ethnicity and religion.

Bedouin women face patriarchal cultural pressure that encourages them to avoid contact with outsiders and generally makes it challenging to pursue a career. In fact, by some estimates, Bedouin women account for less than 1% of women working in the high-tech sector in Israel. SolarEdge created a unique tech hub and training programme to help Bedouin women transcend traditional cultural barriers and demonstrate to other women in their community that cultural norms aren’t insurmountable obstacles to career success. 
 
SolarEdge brought the tech hub and training programme to a Bedouin community in northern Israel in Zarzir to improve career prospects. The programme focused on training a group of 14 Bedouin women by bringing in experts from the SolarEdge IT team over the course of 4 months to build their skills with ERP and CRM system automation. All 14 women who participated in the training program were offered and accepted jobs with SolarEdge, and these women are now creating automated testing scripts as part of our QA process to help us deploy a new ERP system. The success of these women made them role models in their communities and motivated many others to find fulfillment and pursue meaningful careers. 

The founder and driving force behind SoliTek, Vidmantas, a racing enthusiast, was deeply inspired by the story of another racer, Gintaras’ story. Gintaras became disabled during a car accident. Back in 1996, a couple of years after the USSR collapse in Lithuania, it was believed a person with a disability could not live a full life. Yet, Gintaras had no intention of accepting this belief and founded an NGO for people with disabilities called "Tu gali" (Eng. "You can").
 

SoliTek's founder couldn't remain indifferent and, from the start of SoliTek, promised to help Gintaras with his idea. Since then, a significant number of individuals with disabilities from NGO  "Tu gali" have been given a chance at SoliTek. In fact, in recent 3 years, 1/5 of SoliTek's workforce, 20 persons, were people with disabilities.
 

SoliTek also couldn't stand aside when russia attacked Ukraine. From the start of the first aggression in 2014, SoliTek began to hire Ukrainian war refugees & integrate them into their team.  Since February 24, 2022, SoliTek has employed 32 Ukrainian war refugees. The company not only provided them with jobs but also assisted with matters outside of work to help with their integration into a new, unfamiliar country.

Marine Cornelis

Founder,

Next Energy Consumer

Amelie Snijders

EU and Advocacy co-lead at the Brussels binder,

Fleishman Hillard

Soufiane El Amrani

Accessibility expert,

Inclusion Europe

Milan Sverepa

Director,

Inclusion Europe