The SENER Foundation’s International Cooperation Volunteering Program, a collaboration with the Codespa Foundation, is an initiative aimed at facilitating the participation of people from SENER in volunteering programs in developing countries. The goal of the Volunteering Program is to facilitate the cooperation of the SENER company and its employees in solidarity engineering projects, the purpose of which is to seek quality improvements for disadvantaged groups in developing countries.

Since this initiative began, five volunteers from SENER have participated in programs, whose beneficiaries have been the inhabitants of regions in the focus country of each edition.

Volunteering programs carried out

Todoyuca (Colombia) – Optimization of production processes at processing plants for panela sugar and yuca starch

The voluntary work focused on coming up with solutions for the facility’s production, optimizing the work done by people at the plant and improving the methods and management of the same.
Volunteer’s account – Isabel Borges

Nicaragua – Design of an automated computer program to implement an irrigation system

In Nicaragua, poverty is an issue that affects the lives of 44% of the rural population, who lack access to the tools and training that could help them get out of this situation. Most rural families live with food shortages, a problem that gets even worse during the dry season. The volunteers were involved in designing an automated computer program (in MS Excel) to implement the CIAC-Codespa program on the estates of Nicaragua’s smaller and medium-sized producers. The CIAC-Codespa program is an irrigation system that makes furrows in the ground to let the water in, keeping the soil wetter for longer, and increasing the soil’s fertility.
Volunteer’s account – Álvaro Amezaga
Volunteer’s account – José Miguel Fernández

Huambo and Bié (Angola) – Design of an irrigation system using water pumped by wind turbines.

One of the main problems that farmers in Angola encounter is their inability to cultivate crops during the dry system, related to the fact they have no irrigation system for their fields. The work that the engineers performed in Angola resulted in the design of an irrigation system using water pumped by wind turbines, a system that increased farmers’ yields in the Huambo and Bié provinces. It is technology that is low-cost, easy to maintain and advantageous for small areas, its aim being to alleviate Angolan irrigation systems’ major failings, which are very costly.
Volunteer’s account – Claudia Mejía
Volunteer’s account – Rafael Rebolo