This project was designed to be implemented in 3 phases. The project actually kicked-off after the first disbursement of funds precisely, 17th July 2019. Due to the slight late disbursement, phase 1 and 2 to run in parallel.

Phase 1 started since September 2019 on technical skills training: painting, welding, basic electrical and basic solar (for 7 young women selected from the project community of Jurunku).

Business Management workshop later started in March 2020 to ensure effective sustainability of the SMFP.

Phase 2 involved the rehabilitation of the buildings, preparation and installation of solar systems. An old community fisheries development project which was abandoned several years ago, was selected as the project site. 2 buildings and the market square are under completely rehabilitation. The rehabilitation intervention included the provision of tap (running) water to the Solar Multifunctional Platform (SMFP) by incorporating a solar water pump extending from the village borehole with solar water system. All the solar equipment has been system.

The renovation works also included painting, electrical installation, welding of the doors and the solar installations which were all performed the 6 young women trainees as part of their hands-on training in line with the project objectives.

Phase 3 (final phase) was the operation of the SMFP which kicked started immediately after the buildings rehabilitation and solar installation. This component was executed by the 6 trained young women from Jurunku with a supervisor who graduated as a solar installer from Fandema Women Development Centre last year, 2019. She also hails from the same district in Niumi.

The following activities were planned and completed this reporting period and the following results were achieved.

2.1 Rehabilitation of the community facilities to build the MFP
A set of a 3 buildings have been rehabilitated at Jurunku?s fish landing site. This comprises the market, the first building with two houses and the second building also with two houses. The first building locates the ice block production, another the washing machine to reduce the women?s workload. The Second building housed the electric tricycle and the last room is being prepared to house the milling machine.
The painting of the walls and the roof?s repairs (in the buildings), was was subcontracted. The trained females contributed by painting the walls and doors and doing the electrical wiring of all the buildings.
This activity started in the middle of January 2020 and ended in the mid of April 2020 due to the COVID 19 Pandemic.During the latter part of the works, the 6 young women wore face masks in line with the regulations to break the spread of COVID 19 and large crowds were prevented from assembling at any one point and time.

Construction of a borehole
The fish landing site didn?t have clean running water. Therefore, the project included access to water by digging a borehole. However, after assessing the water quality, which was low so closed to the tributary. it was suggested to reinforce one of the community boreholes, even though the distance involved was rather long.The meeting with the community decided that this would be a good solution as it will will involve the installation of a solar water pumping system and two tanks, one for the fish landing site and another for the community health center.
On that note, all stakeholders agreed that it will have a higher impact on access to water by using the community borehole instead of digging a new borehole with stability concerns in the fish landing site.
After implementation of this activity and due to the current COVID circumstances, this decision was applauded by the community. Access to water is one of the major prevention measures for a community to reduce the spread of COVID 19 as it will facilitate regular hand washing by the community.

Installation of 3kWp PV system for cooling
The 6 women trainees from Jurunku and their 2 female trainers (graduated in another GEF-SGP project in 2015), installed the 3kWp solar PV stand-alone system at Jurunku?s fish landing site. As the roof of the building was not facing south, they also worked with their trainer to prepare a new structure to install the 9 solar panels facing south in order to be able to generate maximum energy.
The installation lasted for 7 days. All the monitoring and data confirmed the good performance of the installation as well as the operational site.
This completion of this activity empowered the community and led to the full recognition from the community for their full transformation, good expectations and on the overall, women empowerment in this male dominated profession.

Operations of the Solar Multifunctional Platform (SMFP)
The operations of the SMFP comprises income generating activities aligned with community?s ownership and participation. Therefore, the business model of the SMFP provides a sharing between the managers of the SMFP, the community for community development projects and the last one, a savings for the sustainability of the solar system and equipment.

Aligned to that, different trainings were conducted before starting SMFP?s operations.

1.1 TRAINING ON GOVERNACE: Introductory program was conducted on governance and its importance to the community?s decision makers, groups and individuals. This targeted the people of the community but due to COVID-19 rules and regulations, Mbolo conducted only 6 groups training and practiced social distancing. It highlighted what roles the community should play, SMFPS and Mbolo. At the end of the training, the draft MoU was amended and tailor-made to the decisions taken and signed. This part, emphasized on the model of sharing by the stakeholders/partners: (1) SMFPs managers, (2) sustainability and (3) community.

1.2 TRAINING ON BUSINESS: As the trainees could not complete the overall programme because of the COVID-19, the grantee (Mbolo Association) did a fast track training on customer care and basic marketing What is pending now is to trained them on market survey and sensitization and made them to understand how the above tools can help them reach communities. To ensure proper record/book-keeping and communication, another graduated student from this program located in Niumi, has been attached to provide supervision on hands-on training in business management.

1.3 OPERATIONS AND COMMUNICATION: Mbolo Association and the community established the protocols of data collection, monitoring and maintenance of the solar system. On that note, it was emphasized that proper communication between operators at SMFP and Mbolo Association; operators and the community should be strengthened and maintained at all times as each partner is expected to fulfill their commitments.

TRAINING OF THE YOUNG WOMEN ON HOW TO RIDE THE ELECTRIC TRICYCLE: The project included an electric tricycle for the transportation and supply of products and services from SMFP to the customers and to address the transport gap which was identified earlier on. This sustainable means of transport will reduce the GHG emissions as the tricycle is run on solar batteries and manually as an option when the batteries run out of power. When fully charged, the tricycle can run for 60 kilometers. Despite all the operators at the SMFP 70% were trained are able to ride the tricycle.

Since 5th May, 2020, 5 women from Jurunku and another from Niumi Lamin are operating the SMFP. The current business activities include Ice block making for fishermen and community; cold canned drinks, wonjo/baobab juice; washing machine laundry and charging mobiles. All these activities provided in the first month of its operations (precisely, 25 days) a revenue of 14,445 GMD (income 18,685GMD and expenditure 4,240GMD), which was shared by 35% operators, 50% sustainability and 15% community respectively.

Community also engaged in cleaning the weeds surrounding the facility, supporting the SMFP by using the services and buying the products; fencing the premises, disseminating in other communities their good practice.

It is important and gratifying to note that all the activities implemented are all now yielding the desired results. The community has itself to the ownership of the project. The operators have been empowered, and are proud of being part of the success story and all of them willing to move forward with this project model.

Dissemination of the outputs of the project
Different activities have been executed to disseminate the project outputs using:
? -Facebook posts
? -Meetings with local authorities and other institutions (The Regional Governor (NBR), The District Chief, The Village Alkalo and other international stakeholders like the EU, UNDP, AAITG, MECCNAR) to introduce the SMFP at Jurunku as one of our best practices.
? -GRTS - the national television.

Monitoring and evaluation
Regular Monthly visits to the project community was carried out since August 2019 to the completion of the project in April 2020.

- The project benefited the entire community of Jurunku which has a population of 3, 000 individuls and composed of 103 households by providing them with opportunities to improve their livelihoods through employment creation based on green technology.

Challenges
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the training activities were temporarily suspended. Some of the training programmes were executed in small groups where social distancing were observed. The rest of the trainings such as food preservation, business development etc will be carried out when the restrictions on gatherings are lifted by the national authorities.