Why does Rural Hackers Mentoring begin?
Our main objective with Rural Hackers is to provide free quality support to everyone who believes in the revitalization of rural areas. We are conscious that developing new ideas in a rural environment can be challenging because of the depopulated areas with less and less activity and fewer support networks, rural exodus, and aging population.
These facts create barriers to becoming an entrepreneur and beginning new projects and initiatives.
As a final result, new ideas do not come to rural areas and this jeopardizes our way of living, endangers a whole tradition, and disconnects us from our roots.
We envision new technology and network supports as plot twisters to overcome this situation. Together we can bring steamy change to rural areas and help to build new astounding ecosystems.
Because of all described above, we have created Rural Hackers Mentoring.
What is Rural Hacking Mentoring?
If you have an idea that can help revitalize life in rural areas, we’ll help you share our ideas, perspectives, and networks with you. You can contact us. Tell us your proposal and we will meet with you once a month to accompany you in the creative process of making your idea a reality.
We have our feet on the ground. Learning new skills is not accessible to everyone, for this reason, we offer this mentoring for free.
As you can read in our manifesto, Rural Hackers is based on the power of inspiration. Our aim is to make you part of a network where you can find people who become your reference for developing your idea.
Our first mentoring project: Agube, contributing to water management in small villages
Since we founded Anceu coliving, we are members of the Water Association of Anceu village, a User Community for Water supply. We discovered the importance of this association which is managed by the local people in a disinterested way.
We realized that technology could help to make the processes easier in this management. That is why for the last couple of years we have been working on proofs of concept of possible technological solutions to help our village. You can see here a little bit more about our first prototype project here.
To our surprise, our team member Agustin, through the slack group of StartUp Galicia discovered Agube, the project of Fran, German, and Santi and he decided to contact them.
Agube work on digitizing the User Communities for Water supply.
Thanks to Fran, German, and Santi we discovered the historical evolution of these Water Associations like the one in Anceu.
In the past, in the villages and towns of Galicia, the houses did not have water, people filled jars, bottles, and demijohns… and they transported them to their homes with carts and mules. More than forty years ago, neighbors began to join together to look for and look for a solution that would allow them to be self-sufficient in water in order to have the same quality of life as people living in the city.
The first Communities of Users for Water Supply began to appear, and groups of neighbors under some statutes of use began to enjoy the water that came out of their taps, the result of the effort, time, and money that they dedicated voluntarily without expecting anything in return.
After so many years, these communities have continued working, improving, and maintaining their facilities. The towns have grown to such an extent that it has become a great challenge to manage all the work of the community to continue to ensure that water reaches the homes.
Nowadays, it is common to see that responsibility rests with a few, usually the board of directors of the Water Community.
The towns are growing and new homes are appearing in the communities. Today, many neighbors are unaware of the existence of this self-supply system and of the titanic work of those who manage it in a completely voluntary and uninterested way.
If we renounce this system, all the money, work, and time that has been allocated to the infrastructure of the community will be put out to tender and will go to a company that will privatize all the facilities instead of paying for the annual fee, this company will charge a minimum monthly fee for water consumption.
This problem is not only in Galicia, it exists throughout the Spanish ecosystem.
What does motivate Agube team?
Agube mission is to bring technology closer to the Water Communities, to provide them with management tools, and to help them become digitalized so that all the volunteers who are working behind the scenes invest less time and effort every day.
They believe that it is their responsibility to help the communities to fight to prevail, strengthening them with new technologies that help them to fight against water scarcity, deal with daily problems, mediate with neighbors and, above all, take care and encourage responsible use of water.
Here, you can find an interactive video about how Agube tecnology system works.
How is the Rural Hackers mentoring process with Agube
Every month our mentor Agustin meets online or offline with Santi, Fran, and German. They share their visions and challenges. The mentor gives ideas, proposals and offers interesting people to meet to make the project evolve.
In particular, he has put them in contact with people who are part of the Anceu Water Association community. He also shares the project with technology companies that may be interested in helping the development of this idea that promotes rural community revitalization.
If you have any interesting ideas, we are all ears.
