{"id":789,"date":"2015-04-13T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blogs\/?p=789"},"modified":"2017-07-25T09:16:10","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T13:16:10","slug":"hyderabad-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/hyderabad-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyderabad 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings from Hyderabad, India! I\u2019m Sean Holmes (that\u2019s me in the middle in\u00a0the sunnies, standing in front of the Charminar monument and mosque<\/strong>), a sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia. With my AECOM colleagues Louis Scipione (left) and\u00a0Zara Marais (right), I\u2019m currently taking part in <\/strong>Pollinate Energy\u2019<\/strong><\/a>s third Young Professionals Program.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

All three of us will be blogging about our adventures in India over the next few weeks, right here on the AECOM Impact blog. Below is my first post, so please leave a comment, share it around. We look forward to sharing our journey with you!<\/strong><\/p>\n

After mad rushes to get everything prepared back at home, we\u2019ve finally made the 18-hour transit to \u201cThe Hive,\u201d Pollinate Energy\u2019s headquarters in Hyderabad.<\/p>\n

Zara, Louis and I arrived around midnight to a very warm, 30-degree-Celsius (86-degree-Fahrenheit) heat, but the temperature wasn\u2019t nearly as warm as the welcome we received from Paul, Pascal and the rest of the Pollinate Energy crew and volunteers. We\u2019re now set for two weeks working with Pollinate as part of its Young Professionals Program.<\/p>\n

Upon landing, it\u2019s immediately apparent how fast-growing and multicultural Hyderabad is. With a population of close to 10 million, it\u2019s approaching \u201cmega city\u201d status. Companies \u2014 including Google, Facebook, IBM and various other technology companies \u2014 have local headquarters in the Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consultancy (HITEC) city, and there is clearly a large interest in Hyderabad\u2019s development on an international scale.<\/p>\n

The city also has a large Islamic population and a noticeable mix of Hindu and Islamic cultures.<\/p>\n

\"Sean_Holmes_690x355\"We\u2019re not just here to take in the sights of this bustling city, however. The goal of Pollinate Energy in Hyderabad is primarily to prove the scalability of the not-for-profit social business across cities within India.<\/p>\n

With an ambitious target of addressing energy poverty across 50 cities by 2020, Pollinate Energy\u2019s expansion into Hyderabad is its first operation outside of Bangalore, and its success here is critical to future expansion plans across India.<\/p>\n

Our task during the Young Professionals Program is primarily to train and assist local business men and women to manage their own companies. We will be accompanying these individuals into disadvantaged communities, helping them initiate and close sales of Pollinate\u2019s range of clean, renewable energy products, which include solar lights and low-smoke cook stoves as well as water filters and several personal hygiene products. It will be an ambitious task, but it is something we\u2019re really excited about and looking forward to.<\/p>\n

Of course, we\u2019re in the early days of this effort and, so far, we have all gathered a basic understanding of the city through training and a tour. When it all starts, we will visit the \u201cinvisible\u201d communities of Hyderabad to make some lasting impacts and continue Pollinate\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned; there\u2019s plenty more to come!<\/p>\n

\"Sean_Holmes_HS_BW_89x100\"Sean Holmes is an AECOM sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia.
\nLinkedIn: <\/em>Sean Holmes<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings from Hyderabad, India! I\u2019m Sean Holmes (that\u2019s me in the middle in\u00a0the sunnies, standing in front of the Charminar monument and mosque), a sustainability engineer based in Sydney, Australia. With my AECOM colleagues Louis Scipione (left) and\u00a0Zara Marais (right), I\u2019m currently taking part in Pollinate Energy\u2019s third Young Professionals Program.\u00a0 All three of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,83],"tags":[138,66],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate-social-responsibility","category-sustainability-and-resiliency","tag-impact","tag-pollinate-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}