Footprint Project's Rae Goldman, Associate Director of Operations, and Gabriel Pacheco, Caribbean Program Manager, arrived in Venezuela in early July to lead the response on the ground, focused on getting reliable power to families and institutions — including the churches and community foundations described below — that the broader response hasn't yet reached. Since activating on June 25, our Footprint Project staff, and a growing group of local volunteers, have logged more than 919 combined hours assessing sites, delivering equipment, and building the community partnerships needed to get reliable power where it's needed most.

As multiple wildfires burned across Los Angeles County in early 2025, We partnered with the local film industry and the National Forest Service to replace 4 large diesel generators with solar and battery energy storage systems. 

A team led by Footprint Project and Overdrive Energy Solutions worked with the U.S. Forest Service to replace diesel generators with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) at the Eaton Fire Incident Command (IC) Post at the Rose Bowl Stadium. The Rose Bowl Stadium and surrounding parking lots had been turned into a massive incident command post. Agencies involved included LA Fire, LA County Fire, CAL Fire, LAPD, and the U.S. Forest Service. Because the Eaton Fire was burning on federal forest service land, the U.S. Forest Service was leading the operation. During this crisis, the stadium turned into a staging ground for over 4,000 firefighters, national guard troops, and first responders from city, state, county, and federal agencies. 

On July 30-31, 2025, we gathered 200 folks from 120 organizations within our community of responders in Black Mountain, NC, for the inaugural Resilience Fest. Not quite a conference and more than just a festival, this event brought together individuals and organizations with firsthand experience in sustainable, community-based disaster response and recovery. We met, laughed, cried, learned, danced, trained, shared, and prepared. 

Hurricane Melissa closed out 2025 as a late-season hurricane -- the strongest storm to ever strike the island nation of Jamaica. This was our first in-person international response where we sent staff, volunteers, and renewable response technologies to respond to the devastating Category 5 storm. We worked with several local community partners and international humanitarian relief organizations to provide lifesaving communication hubs and mobile solar microgrid power for health clinics.

Before, powering Broad River Fire Department's Shumont Substation during outages meant relying on loud, polluting gas generators that needed constant refueling. Now, a solar microgrid powers the station and has created a resilience hub that's no longer reliant on the main electrical grid or gas generators. Community members can rest assured that they have a reliable place to go for clean water, emergency communications, and refuge when facing a natural disaster. Solar power serves as an integral tool to keep the fire department up and running.

Headquartered in Metairie, Louisiana, Footprint Project deeply engages with the vibrant communities of the Greater New Orleans area. From this base, we also serve the entire Gulf Coast region and support our team and partners throughout the U.S. and Caribbean. In 2025, we strengthened and expanded our partnerships, focusing on:

• Beehive Microgrids™ and Transfer Switches

• STEM Education + Community Engagement

• Serving as Footprint Project’s headquarters to support all of our other regions and programs

After Hurricane Helene in 2024, our rapid response program (and the partnerships we built within it) inspired the state of North Carolina to deeply invest in our unique model of resilience. In early 2025, we hired 5, new full-time staff and moved into our brand-new Appalachia Regional Hub in Mars Hill, NC. Now, our local team is simultaneously doing the very hard work of long-term recovery with individuals still struggling from Helene and driving forward innovation through the development of Beehive Microgrids. We have been transitioning sites from temporary, emergency power in the immediate Helene aftermath to permanent systems they’ll have ahead of the next storm. This full-circle climate resilience is something we’ve been working towards since the beginning.

For those of you following our work in community resilience, you may have wondered what we’ve been up to. At Footprint Project, our work extends to many community projects outside of our Western North Carolina Solar Free Store. If you’ve been waiting for our WNC Solar Free Store to open again, we appreciate your patience! Here is just a small fraction of what our tight-knit team has been working on.

Emily is a DC-based solar professional who has spent nearly 20 years scaling equitable, distributed solar across the country. Prior to joining Footprint, Emily served as Senior Special Advisors for the EPA’s Solar for All program and the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technology Office. Before the Federal government she spent 13 years scaling Solar United Neighbors (SUN).

After months of designing and building, we recently met up with worker-owned cooperative Chispas at their headquarters in Asheville, NC to deliver a new solar trailer. While sharing some amazing food, our team trained Chispas members to use the trailer to power essentials under blue or grey skies.

We would like to introduce you to our newest board member, Sara Rossi. Sara is the Managing Director of the Health Resiliency Fund at Direct Relief.

In her work, she oversees initiatives and grant-making programs that strengthen health facilities’ resilience and sustainability in the face of disasters and a changing climate, domestically and around the world.

As the first major storm of 2026, Winter Storm Fern has kept us busy here at Footprint Project! We hope that everyone who has been impacted by the ice, snow and cold temperatures stays safe and has received help as soon as possible.

On September 22, 2024, Hurricane Helene emerged in the Caribbean Sea, rapidly intensifying into a devastating Category 4 storm aimed at Florida and later impacting six states, particularly wreaking havoc in North Carolina. Our team mobilized quickly, deploying renewable energy solutions and establishing essential support hubs to aid communities in desperate need.