AHL-ALBAIT SOCIETY SCOTLAND A Leading Example for Energy

Efficiency

Climate Change Final Report

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Project Manager - Azzam Mohamad

Energy Advisers - Sabah Ibrahim and Qusai Hatem

www.ahlalbaitsocietyscotland.co.uk

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Our History

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The Society is a community based charity, working with ethnic minorities mostly from Iraq and Lebanon but its door is open and welcome any body. The aim of the establishment is to promote the cultural heritage, religious faith and vital community services. This includes practising Islamic faith, teaching kids how to become good Muslims (good member of Society), helping and encouraging our people to settle and integrate within the Scottish communities.

Ahl Al-bait Society is a registered charity (SC167651), which was formed 1991 and residents at 25 Woodside Place, Glasgow G3 7QL.

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The Society works with all variety of communities, organisations and government bodies such as Scottish Police (the centre become the third party of hate crime and members can come and discuss their experience), Scottish Politician, Muslim Council of Scotland and Scottish authorities to develop further understanding between people of different ethnic minorities to foster integration and better relationship with larger Scottish Community.

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Ahl Al-Bait Society hold several events such as Eid party joining with Police, and Peace and Unity Conference hold in Celtic Park to more than 500 re-presenters from different Societies and Organisations including Politician, Councillors, Universities lecturers including the First Minister, Lord Province and the Head of the Army and police and also leaders of different parties.

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Weekly programmes (Thursday and Saturday evening are held in the centre for adults and children to practice our faith, learning Qur'an and prayers.

Youth members using the centre every Monday and Friday evening for their programmes of teaching our youths how to become good

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of support and help with their new life and more coming, the centre was able to provide individuals with safe environment for immigrants to come and make the centre second home as most of these families and individuals suffered from stress due to culture differences, lack of language and experience

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Muslim and good citizen of Scotland. The centre is also used by the community for social and community needs. The centre is used every day during the months of Ramadan and Moharam and other events such as weddings and funerals.

We had a huge numbers of refugee come from Iraq which required lots

Promoting Cultural Heritage and Vital Community Services

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The areas of interest identified through the consultation were energy efficiency advice for home owners and improving energy efficiency of our community building and to increase the awareness of climate change by engaging individuals in dialogue. This would be delivered in both English and Arabic - Arabic language because the majority of our community members are Arabic speaking from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, the Arab community living in Glasgow.

Ahl Al Bait were successful with their funding application and were

awarded £134,431.00

With the aim to reduce our communities carbon footprint by

688.92 tonnes, and we proposed to

do this by working in the following key areas identified by our community -

We needed to improve our community building as the building had no roof or wall insulation which contributed to considerable unnecessary heat loss imposing a large energy cost to the community

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and subsequently increases the carbon foot print. The building works improvement was by installing insulation to roof with the latest roofing technology available in the market, also to tackle the aged windows (see detail) below. Furthermore, we aimed to replace all lights with more economically LED lighting.

The community didn’t use the centre to it’s full potential because it was cold and uncomfortable, therefore by improving the building we conserve energy and reduce CO2e, and making the centre more attractive to current and new users both from our community and the wider community.

Due to an increase in numbers of families arriving from Iraq in recent years the centre is used as an advice centre and a social community hub. By improving the condition of the centre we hoped that this would lead to more activities and use of the centre and as a consequence to this increase in use this may also increase the carbon footprint of travel to the centre. We intended to address this issue by giving advise

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(by youth member volunteers) on alternative ways of transport and encouraging our community to walk or cycle as large number of community members live within walking distance. A steering group of young pupils will be set up to promote Climate Challenge within our community to advice and help with this issue.

Project Aims

In the summer of 2014 we heard about organisations applying for the Climate

Challenge Fund so with the assistance of CEMVO we carried out a number of

community consultations.

Reducing our communities carbon

footprint

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Carbon awareness workshops

A series of raising awareness workshops for our community members to support and advise them on household energy savings and carbon reduction measures. Partnership organisations provide support and help organise carbon awareness training for the target households. Community volunteers are trained to provide expertise advice and we hope that these workshops dialogue will continue and our community engagement and reach will expand.

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Home visit advice on Energy Efficiency

We will work with each household and provide guidance, support, distribute energy monitors and advice on one to one basis. Progress will be monitored through project recording (utility bill readings) / documenting CO2e for all participate with aim to make these visits to families in our community continuing to give advice and monitor behaviour change. We will run workshops with identified delivery partners to provide guidance, support and advice.

Support documentary production

Promotional documents and leaflets would be produced in both Arabic and English on Carbon reduction measures ie recycling, minimise food waste, alternative ways to travels, walking, cycling or public transport

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Awareness raising through internet

www.ahlalbaitsocietyscotland.co.uk

Development of dedicated web pages on our website to raise awareness of Climate Change & Energy Efficiency in Arabic and English languages

Other things we’ve done….

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1. The Roof:

After a careful consideration and following the Glasgow City Council (Planning Department) guide line, we invited various roofing company to discuss the required and most energy efficient insulation within our criteria. Indeed we manage to secure a deal with a well known company to achieve our aim. As you can see the roof was well aged basic felt, the skylights are very well worn off with some of normal Perspex which have no energy reduction value.

The following diagram showing a typical heat loss for standard building. If each section is tackled properly, a great energy would be saved and the impact would lead to a significant reduction of CO2.

Building Achievements:

The work of the building consist of three parts

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With the new insulation which is shown in the diagram below, we have anticipated the reduction of heat loss by the figure of £135 which leads to 550 Carbon dioxide savings (kgCO2/year).

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We also replaced the poor and aged three skylights which they were contributing in the heat loss, by modern and double glassed windows taking care of the traditional of an A-listed building, as shown below.

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The windows in the building were in bad conditions, very draughty and badly needed attention. As we know there is about 25% loss of heat through normal windows. At our building the loss would be a lot more since they are in poor conditions.

A complete refurbishment were agreed with draught proofing system since we

were not allowed to carry on a straight replacement

because the nature of the building.

The work on the windows and doors will also contribute in heat loss /Carbon dioxide

2. Windows

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3. Lights

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Home Visits

Our number of home visits of 176 homes

through the project for reducing energy usage

or (the Low-carbon Living Awareness Program) in the

community shows an interesting and

encouraging results (see Table on page).

However, as the current project only

ran for a single year, it is difficult to gauge

true values of energy consumption, as these

values will differ widely depending on the time of year that

the survey was carried out.

This table show the monthly home visits

Jul 2015

10 home visits

Aug 2015

20 home visits

Sept 2015

20 home visits

Oct 2015

30 home visits

Nov 2015

20 home visits

Dec 2015

25 home visits

Jan 2016

26 home visits

Feb 2016

15 home visits

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The result below showing an average of those home visit, for example some of the results in the table (a) are taken from a quarterly bill from different members of the community (February-April 2015) and after our advice and recommendations we obtained the next quarterly reading (May-July 2015) which shows an average reduction up to 21% in the electricity. Similar trend was obtained for the Gas consumption. The results showed a saving up to 23%. While for those on a prepaid meters and using electricity only. We

found that an average saving of 20% on their monthly usage.

A.

Period

Electricity

Gas

January-April 2015

930 KWh

964 KWh

May-July 2015

730 KWh

740 KWh

KWh Saving

200 KWh

224 KWh

% of Saving

21%

23%

• In term of CO2 reduction, it would be a value of 104Kg for the electricity and 40Kg for the gas in each house hold.

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B.

Period

Electricity

Before Visit (April-May)

750 KWh

After Visit

600 KWh

KWh Saving

150 KWh

% of Saving

20 %

• CO2 reduction is equivalent to 78Kg

However, houses were surveyed in May-July and then again in December-January. The energy consumption values are vastly different due to the occupants using more energy as a result of needing to heat their homes more during winter.

If the follow-up visits were instead carried out at the same time of year (e.g. July 2016) as the initial survey, a more realistic view of energy consumption would be obtained as it would be possible to compare data from the two visits. A comparison would allow us to see if the occupants had followed our advice or if the advice and recommendations had any effect in depth upon their energy consumption.

The overall CO2 saving from the electricity usage reduction for 176 homes is 18304Kg and for the gas usage would 7040Kg.

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Increase awareness of energy efficiency

and climate change issues amongst the Arab community

Our Monthly meetings were a great opportunity to discuss the issues of climate Change and the importance of energy efficiency. At first the audience were interested in the topic as it was new and we had not had this on our agenda . The consultation through the development grant kick stared this interest. However after the first few sessions we found that people were losing interest.

From the feedback we learnt that this was because the sessions were “information overload” and “preachy”. So when we met up with other projects through the network and with CEMVO’s help we took a different approach and the session became where possible more participatory and interactive. There were times other volunteers led on these activities and we found this generated more interest.

The community became alive and less passive. Now we have people asking us for so many activities especially outdoors and recycling.

We can say that the project has increased the awareness of approximately 500 people

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There have been three main headline achievements

1. The improvement of the building has encouraged community members to use the facilities a lot more.

From holding 2 or 3 programmes a week in the centre this has increased to the equivalent of daily use. Also

as a result of increase in activity there has been an increase in the number of community members. New

members have joined.

2.The community is talking about climate change. It is still early days to measure how significant the project has been on changing behaviours however what we do know is that people from our community are talking about climate change, our individual responsibility and collective action. These conversations have been brought through reflecting and connecting with what Islam says about the environment. Climate

Change has been brought on to the agenda of local and national Islamic conference

3.The end of year joint celebration event was an exceptional event to be able to come together with other CCF projects, work together on a successful programme, and to be able to showcase and highlight where and how community groups have used the funding and who has benefitted. The day was enjoyed by so many people as it was opened to the public. It was important for us to share and highlight collectively what the CCF projects have achieved and what can be done on a larger scale.

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Learning & Reflection

This was the first time our community group had applied for a grant from a funder so there was a great deal of learning in terms of monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

The process of submitting claims became more complicating than anticipated due to delay in building works and costs changing. At the time of compiling the application the costs were very much estimated and the full extent of building works was not comprehensive in the report produced by surveyor. Within the CCF application form there is no room for a contingency plan for building works. Reprofiling even though at times appeared to be a time consuming and tedious process was extremely beneficial to the delivery and success of the project.

As a community group we had always fund raised or had been given donations for any community programmes ran by the organisations or for improvements to the building so managing and reporting back to a funder was a huge learning experience in itself. However this has been a very positive action and made us an organisation to consider and approach other funders. In turn this means that we no longer restrict activities and are able to involve a much wider community.

The lack of our experience dealing with a funder was evident when attempting to ensure the reports were prepared on time and also we learned a great deal on how to become more effective in our monitoring and evaluation procedures.

Some of the barriers and how we overcame them

Employing and managing staff

We were not prepared for the challenges here. The board members of Ahl Al Bait have extensive experience in managing employed staff in their businesses/working capacity and they also have years of experience working with volunteers so there was a complacency however that it would be straight forward. Additional training was required.

Buildings works

delays to the project occurred due to additional unexpected planning permission required due to the community building being an A listed building. An additional problem also arose again relating to the conservation rules of B listed buildings, this time it was in respect of the possibility of bats residing on the premises.

To verify this, a bat survey was carried out, this took time again delaying the start of any refurbishment work. The building is located within a Conservation area, which is defined as being of ‘’special architectural or historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance’’. Therefore, an Architect had to be involved to take on the design and statutory approvals for careful consideration to any alterations if necessary. Finding appropriate solutions to improving the building fabric performance within a heritage building. Glasgow City Council had finally agreed to our design and choice of material (see the attached sheet), but unfortunately the process took a lot longer than we expected due to the nature of the building.

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Monthly information Sessions At the beginning of the project the monthly sessions were very heavy in giving out information and we learned that the audience at times when engaging on climate change wanted more interactive discursive sessions and were looking for inspiring ways how they could have low carbon lifestyles without losing what they already had.

Home visits There were difficulties in gaining access to home visits if a only a female was in especially if she was on her own. This was due to the fact that both our advisers

were male even though at the time of submitting the application we had stated employing a female adviser. However in reality we had little interest from

women for these posts. In the future for cultural reasons we will ensure that appropriate measures are taken to ensure that this is not a barrier. These could

be ensuring application for post is more supportive of female applicants, a female volunteer could accompany energy adviser , or making appointments

only when husband is present.

Gaining trust for assessing bills/taking readings from bills

Unexpectedly we found there was a reluctance to show actual bills, for some reason there was a perception that this could affect any benefits they are receiving. This took time to establish that the advisers were there to help.

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Finance & Administration

Ahl Al Bait Society is a voluntary community group run by volunteers started of as a small group of individuals meeting regularly and as the Arabic community grew in Glasgow the society grew too.

The Society has an active Board and the programmes are run by sub committees/ steering groups. The programmes delivered are dependent on the needs of the community, or sometimes external organisations ie Police Scotland, local MSPs NHS etc. These programmes don’t require a great deal of money and for anything that does require more funds we do fundraising or ask for donations.

The board members and committee members are made up of business people and professionals all with a reasonable knowledge of budgeting and finance. However we were pushed passed our comfort zone when we had to submit claims and reprofile budgets, and prepare monthly reports. This was a lot more time consuming than what we anticipated. One of the biggest challenges was trying to keep to the same costs as outlined in our CCF application form. The training from CASP and support from CEMVO was much needed and this certainly helped us keep on track.

Regarding the building works it was difficult to estimate all the costs involved at the stage of submitting the application and with all building projects there are unexpected works and then these costs “go out of the window”, We have come to the conclusion that in future we will ensure that a contingency pot of funds are in place.

There have been a lot of services, labour and finance received in kind to ensure the project is completed. This would be difficult to quantify in monetary terms

One significant difference we have found is that this project has enabled us to consider applying to other funders and by doing so we will be able to increase the activities and services. What we have learned a lot about employing staff, engaging volunteers on a long term project, submitting claims and reports. Most importantly we feel the biggest learning has been monitoring the project both in terms of progress but also for the funder.

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Legacy

Promoting Cultural Heritage and Vital Community Services

The community building was improved in terms of its insulation capacity. As it was not a full refurbishment the building was kept open and was regularly used by our community members throughout. This was an excellent opportunity to inform reasons for installing insulation, conserving energy loss and for reducing energy consumption in terms of our responsibility towards reducing the carbon emissions and as a result reducing impacts on climate change. The centre became an exemplary building from which members are able to learn and implement changes in their own homes.

The community building will remain as an advice centre for those wanting further information on energy efficiency advice.

Within our Islamic programmes and conferences we have now put Climate Change on the agenda. Climate change, the impacts, how to tackle the issues and action to reduce carbon emissions and how to be resilient are all being discussed from an Islamic prospective.

A video of home visits was developed with the purpose of using this as an engagement tool for new home visits and also for workshops. The video is available on our website and on the society’s You Tube channel.

A report has been published to share the knowledge and skills we learnt throughout the project, together with dedicated webpage on our website with tips and advice on energy efficiency and climate change.

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Testimonials

“it’s always warm in here now”

Joumana Rachid, Housewife and volunteer

“We don’t mind coming to the centre now especially with my baby. Before the centre was cold and draughty not a place for young children”

Noor Ahmed Khweir

“It’s nice to hang out here now. Before we always rushed off home. We get to chat to each other for longer” Ali Mohamad, student and community youth volunteer

“I’ve notice many more people coming here , this is good” Rosol Mohamad, University Student

“The building has some small improvements like insulation and draught proofing hopefully this will help with the bills. Already this winter we felt the difference, the building was actually warm.” Faryruz Kraish

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Case Studies

Case Study 1 :

A family living in the Woodlands Area of Glasgow, in a grade “A” listed building.

When we visited, the windows in the property had a .05cm gap between the frame and the window. We advised the family to get in touch with the housing association to rectify this. The family followed our advice and now all the windows sealed. That family have said they have noticed a huge difference to the warmth of their flat and also the price of the energy bills.

Case Study 2 :

A large family in a High Flat in Glasgow..

The property had a metal Immersion heater, but with no insulation at all. After running a bath for one child, they had almost no hot water as they were losing so much heat from the heater.

We advised them to contact the housing association to put insulation on the hot water tank.

They did this, and the engineer put a boiler blanket was put round the tank. The family more efficiency and effectiveness in their water heating.

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Throughout the course of the project there have been regular drop-in

sessions/advice surgeries, 1 to 2 sessions every week, usually on Thursdays

and Saturdays.

There have been 10 training sessions to provide information and skills. These

have been held on a monthly basis with at least 20 members participating.

We have held 10 big events engaging with large numbers of our community

again these events were held on a monthly basis. At each of these events on average we would have 200 people attending.

2 staff members have achieved qualifications through City & Guilds Energy

Awareness

The number of people this project has been able to employ has been 2 FTE.

The project regularly actively involves 300 people – attending groups

& workshops and using the community facilities.

The number of people volunteering their time and energy on this project are 30. The volunteers are regular community members; we

have a good mix of male and female, and board members. What we have noticed that there has been more interest from our younger

members wanting to be involved with volunteering.

We have 1 school involved in our project.

This CCF project has enabled 1 community-owned building to be

refurbished.

176 Home Energy Checks/ Home Visits have been carried out by our

project.

20 households have been referred on to other agencies or providers (e.g.

HES, Green Deal assessor) for further action.

8 households have installed energy efficiency measures – loft, wall or

floor insulation, draft-proofing, double glazing.

Summary of Activities

Reducing our communities’ carbon

footprint

Ahl Al Bait Society Scotland

25 Woodside Place, Glasgow G3 7QL

CCF – 3706 Project

www.ahlalbaitsocietyscotland.co.uk