Up! Energía

At Up! Energía we have three clear and ambitious objectives:
1) To combat the problems caused by the greenhouse effect
2) To promote better waste management
3) To fight against youth unemployment and the risk of social exclusion.

To achieve these objectives we want to be a social company that can handle thousands of tonnes of waste, to generate thousands of tonnes of pellets and to create jobs.
And, as the only way is Up!, we're already well on the way to achieving these objectives, but we'll get there quicker with your help.

The AIM OF OUR CAMPAIGN is to publicise our project and to obtain the funding we need to continue testing for at least 3 more months. So what do we have to do?

Continue to collect coffee grounds from different points such as cafés, train stations, the airport, hospitals, etc. How?

1. By renting a van.
2. By buying materials such as containers, which we can give to cafés for storing the coffee grounds.
3. By paying for driving lessons, a driving test and driving licence fees which will enable one of our young people to join the collection team.

Continue making pellets for analysis and improvement, until we've achieved the optimum quality. For this we need:

1. To maintain the rental of our production centre, where we process the coffee grounds and transform them into pellets
2. To buy materials like bags, special material for sun-drying the coffee, etc.

Set up a grant for young people no longer under guardianship to do an internship with us.

Hire a person on the team who can continue to dedicate all their time to Up!

But we really want to do much more, so the ideal amount would cover 3 more months, a total of 6 months work, as well as allow us to hire a second person for Up!:

To continue renting our production centre, where we process the coffee grounds and transform them into pellets

To extend the van rental and to buy more material for logistics

To extend the contract of the person in the team who dedicates their time to Up! (we've all worked on a voluntarily basis up to now)

To be able to hire a second person in the team for 3 months.

Up! Energía grew from an awareness of young migrants who have arrived in our country fleeing from war and famine, with the sole objective of carving out a future for themselves.

Migratory processes are never easy, not even when it's one's own choice and you have qualifications, work, languages and a support network. So we think about what happens to these young people who, although they are protected by the State while still minors, when they reach adult age will end up on the street and become institutionally invisible. Therefore, the first step for their social inclusion is to obtain a work contract that would allow them to legalise their situation.

Up| Energía wants to provide these young people with a channel through which they can enter society. And what better way to do this than allow them to participate in the creation of a clean energy solution and the proper management of waste that would otherwise end up in dumpsites and pollute our environment?

Up! Energía is based on cooperation with other social entities - such as the TEB cooperative group and EICASCANTIC, private companies Productos del Café, Areas and ISS, and universities such as the UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia). Through this collaboration, we've already collected 5 tonnes of waste, involving more than 80 establishments in the neighbourhoods of Sants and Gracia, and have incorporated two young people directly and 4 people indirectly.

Imagine a network of clean energy producers that minimise CO2 emissions generated by poorly managed waste and who promote social inclusion and employment for vulnerable groups? We do, and that's why we're working so that, in the future, we can replicate Up! in other cities and together we can generate clean ENERGY, a SOCIAL energy.

At Up! we love diversity, which explains our multicultural team formed of 8 different nationalities, with 10 different languages spoken (not all at the same time though :-))

We're a multidisciplinary team, in which everyone contributes their knowledge and develops their abilities. Some of us have substantial commercial experience in multinational companies, leading teams and developing growth strategies; others come from the social sector, where they have developed highly successful social projects or have worked in the area of renewable energies; and some are at university, studying different fields of engineering. And, of course, let's not forget our young people, no longer under guardianship, who are embarking upon a new journey of learning and who bring tenacity and a spirit of self-improvement.
We are fortunate to have excellent mentors to guide us and to help resolve our doubts, as well as an extensive group of volunteers who dedicate their time and experience so that Up! can continue to grow.