News - March 7, 2022
Welcome our Ambassadors for 2022!
Written by Ricardo Flores
For over three years, the Expert Community has provided a vital service to the Solar Impulse Foundation’s goal of identifying and labelling 1000+ clean and profitable Solutions. The Experts have undertaken over 4000 assessments, translating into many thousands of hours of professional expertise given up free of charge to help contribute to a cleaner future. A wealth of knowledge, networks and experience lies within the Expert Community, up until now this excellent resource has remained relatively untapped. As the Foundation moves into a new phase of its mission, opportunities appear to allow certain Experts to contribute in new ways, not only to advance the goals of the Foundation, but also to continue to provide a motivating and rewarding role those professionals.
Last year, our team reached out to Experts Benjamin Demma, Ritalba Lamendola, Sarah Qureshi, Sergio Barbarino and Silvestro Russo, in order to start framing a new role for them: the Solar Impulse Ambassador. From September to December, we hosted recurrent meetings and discussed about the social media influencing, Solutions outreach, knowledge sharing and public speaking. This first trial phase in 2021 allowed us to prepare a roadmap, including indicators to measure the program's success as well as the major steps or milestones needed to reach desired outcomes. Then, we have expanded it and invited more people to officially launch the program earlier this year.
The Solar Impulse Ambassador Program is targeted at outstanding Experts who have demonstrated commitment to their role with the Foundation, and to addressing environmental challenges through qualitative economic growth. Drawing on multiple years of experience in our target SDGs, as well as their extensive professional networks, Experts enrolled in the Ambassador Program will a) provide complementary means of promoting the adoption of the 1000+ clean and profitable Solutions; b) actively share their knowledge of the Efficient Solutions worldwide; c) and engage all relevant stakeholders to the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions. In simple words, the Ambassadors will act as advocates to our cause.
The Program's main goal is to empower a select group of highly motivated Experts, which can represent and promote the Foundation’s main products (i.e. the Efficient Solution Label, the Solutions Explorer and the Guide(s)) in their communities and professional networks. This will allow us to expand the World Alliance, foster synergies and establish new collaborations, while creating a wider understanding of the Solar Impulse Foundation’s work. Furthermore, the Ambassador Program represents is also an exciting and rewarding new experience that can be offered to maintain interest in the Expert Community.
Advocacy is a tactic for achieving social and/or policy change. It requires framing a certain issue, developing alliances, and gathering and disseminating data across interested parties. In our case, the SIF has made these efforts since 2017, having relied on Bertrand Piccard as its main advocate. His work has allowed the Foundation to create the initial infrastructure that will lead to policy and decision-making changes. In this sense, the Ambassador Program will be a complementary effort to to that of our team. The Ambassadors will help us not only with creating strategic alliances for environmental protection but also increasing private/public/political awareness and will to develop our world sustainably.
Welcome the Ambassadors for 2022!
Written by Ricardo Flores on March 7, 2022
