NABUUR.com and Essent online voluntary work

Amersfoort/Arnhem - Trainees from energy company Essent are about to embark on worldwide voluntary work in collaboration with NABUUR.com. Via the internet they will be helping with local projects all over the world, making full use of their knowledge, contacts and creativity. The organisation NABUUR.com is creating a worldwide network of online volunteers to help in Africa, Asia and Latin-America. Essent is the first company to join NABUUR.com and become a Business Neighbour.

Siegfried Woldhek, in charge of the initiative at NABUUR.com, is pleased that Essent has joined: ‘These days there are new opportunities for accomplishing a social vision. I am very pleased that Essent is taking the lead in helping us to investigate these opportunities.’ 

The group of Essent employees is starting off with two projects in Africa. In Uganda they are helping to produce a better power supply and in Zambia they will concentrate their efforts on creating an internet café.

Ilse van Eersel, one of the participating trainees: ‘By taking part in these two projects we are able to make use of knowledge we have gained during our studies and our work at Essent. The collaboration with Nabuur is a great initiative.’ Marga Edens, CSR manager at Essent, is also positive: ‘This means that, as well as being a corporate citizen, Essent can also be a corporate neighbour, contributing towards energy for today and tomorrow, both here and elsewhere in the world’.

The trainees will shortly be introduced to representatives from ‘their’ village via a chatroom. They will then meet other Neighbours (i.e. volunteers) from the village via the NABUUR.com website and the international multicultural collaboration will begin. The project will last three months.

About NABUUR.com
NABUUR.com combines the best of the old (neighbourhood help) with the best of the here and now (internet). For volunteers NABUUR.com is the place where they can make a positive difference, without leaving their own homes, at a time that suits them. And in an environmentally friendly way. For villages in developing countries NABUUR.com is about empowerment and access to knowledge which would not otherwise be available. This innovative method is bringing reliable results: dairy cooperatives have been started, internet cafés opened and new sources of income devised, for example. NABUUR.com currently has almost 12,500 participating Neighbours and 151 Villages in 52 different countries.

About Essent
With an annual turnover of 7.4 billion euros in 2007, Essent is the largest energy company in The Netherlands. Essent supplies electricity, gas and heating to domestic and business customers. Essent is active throughout the entire energy chain: from the production of energy up to and including supply to end users. The corporation views The Netherlands as its home market, but has now also built up a considerable market position in Germany and is doing so increasingly in Belgium too. The group's environmental branch processes waste into energy and residual currents. Essent employs approximately 11,000 people.

Published: 28 April 2008