The Grande Riv­iere Vis­i­tor Cen­tre has tak­en a ma­jor step to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Thanks to new so­lar tech­nol­o­gy, the cen­tre—the heart­beat of the eco-tourism vil­lage and home to a choco­late fac­to­ry, guid­ed tours, and a tur­tle hatch­ery—now op­er­ates as a self-sus­tain­ing hub of re­new­able en­er­gy, pow­er­ing es­sen­tial com­mu­ni­ty en­ter­pris­es and sup­port­ing long-term de­vel­op­ment.

Through the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties (EPIC) grant pro­gramme, the Grande Riv­iere Tourism De­vel­op­ment Or­gan­i­sa­tion (GRT­DO) se­cured $150,000 in fund­ing to in­stall a Man­go Pow­er so­lar sys­tem, dra­mat­i­cal­ly cut­ting the cen­tre’s elec­tric­i­ty costs, which pre­vi­ous­ly av­er­aged as much as $4,000 per bill. The in­stal­la­tion was com­plet­ed in Ju­ly.

GRT­DO pres­i­dent Len Pe­ters de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as trans­for­ma­tive for the re­mote North Coast vil­lage.

“We can now bet­ter with­stand pow­er out­ages and re­duce the costs and dis­rup­tions that come with black­outs. The fu­ture of our com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven sus­tain­able projects has been giv­en a boost with the in­stal­la­tion of the Man­go Pow­er so­lar sys­tem,” Pe­ters said.

The project, apt­ly ti­tled “So­lar So­lu­tions for To­mor­row,” was one of ten EPIC ini­tia­tives fund­ed last year by the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion and Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­flect­ing their shared com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing clean en­er­gy and com­mu­ni­ty re­silience.

Cindyann Cur­ren­cy, head of Op­er­a­tions at Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, praised the group for its for­ward-think­ing ap­proach.

“This ‘up-riv­er project’ tack­les key chal­lenges in a sus­tain­able, cli­mate-friend­ly way, em­pow­er­ing res­i­dents to con­tin­ue shap­ing their com­mu­ni­ty in­to the change they want to see,” she said.

Launched by the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion in 2016, the EPIC pro­gramme has since fund­ed 160 projects na­tion­wide, rep­re­sent­ing an $8.8 mil­lion in­vest­ment in com­mu­ni­ty em­pow­er­ment.

Shell T&T, which joined as a co-fund­ing part­ner in 2023, re­cent­ly ex­tend­ed its sup­port for an­oth­er three years with a $1.9 mil­lion in­vest­ment—reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty across T&T.