International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies
Earlier this week our co-founder and CTO Sonika Manandhar spoke at the panel discussion of the world’s first ever International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. The panel was held on 8th of September celebrating and embarking on the journey of efforts to keep the air clean. This year’s 2020 theme was Clean Air for All. For the discussion, our CTO was joined by great personalities like H.E. UNPGA, H.E. Secretary-General of the United Nations and H.E. Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway.
Aeloi’s CTO talked about how collective grassroots actions is the solution for cleaner air or climate change in general. Kathmandu became a green city pioneer by launching electric trolley bus in 1975. After that Kathmandu introduced Nepal to 700 electric minibuses driven by women. At the time those minibuses reduced CO2 equivalent to 17000 to 22000 kg/day compared to buses. Having said that our CTO explained how the same city suffers from air pollution that is five times higher than the safe level right now.
Aeloi’s vision is to support informal sector micro-entrepreneurs in electric vehicle led public transport sector with affordable finance. Being a daughter of the former micro-entrepreneur herself, she understands how affordable capital is essential for building prosperous economy. For instance Sachita, one of our women safa tempo (electric minibus) drivers is an informal sector micro-entrepreneur and the lack of enough financial footprints to prove her income leads to distrust of banks. Aeloi being a fintech software company is helping mobilize the grassroots climate heroes who have been working from the very beginning to tackle climate change and air pollution. We had the solution before, we have the solution now, it takes grassroots actions to tackle a global environmental threat like air pollution and climate change.
