NRECA Bestows International Service Award on Gregg Gardiner for Advancing the Mission of Electrification in Developing Nations
NRECA News Release - 2007-03-22

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) today honored Gregg Gardiner, former chairman and director of Kaua‛i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC), HI, for his service to the Philippines, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Gardiner received the award at the 2007 NRECA Annual Meeting.

Gardiner, who served on NRECA’s Board from 2002 to 2006 and who chaired the International Committee of the NRECA Board, has traveled to the Philippines, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and helped raise money and equipment to turn on the lights in remote villages in those nations.

As a member of NRECA’s International Committee, Gardiner led KIUC to formalize a “sister co-op” relationship with one of the small, remote electric cooperatives in the Philippines. Gardiner has given his own funds to establish a library in the Philippines so people can read by their new lights. Gardiner also helped orchestrate efforts to collect and ship used computer equipment, utility trucks and vehicles, and other equipment to cooperatives internationally.

Gardiner, who founded the regional visitor magazine “101 Things to Do,” was Chairman of the KIUC board and Director on the NRECA board. Gardiner donated almost all his stipends to NRECA International Programs Division (IPD).

Gardiner participated in NRECA IPD directors’ trips to the Dominican Republic and Haiti in order to help assess how best to provide assistance in these areas, and he was enlisted by the Governor of American Samoa to serve on the local co-op’s board of directors, where he assisted in outreach to other utilities in the Pacific region.

"Gregg's work in the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Haiti exemplify the principle at the heart of NRECA’s International Program: spreading the unique electric cooperative model abroad so that countries on the threshold of development and industrialization can duplicate the tremendous success of cooperatives here in the U.S.,” said Ron Bergh, NRECA President. “His personal generosity exemplifies the best of the cooperative spirit.”

In 1999 Gardiner helped organize a group of other business and community leaders to convert the local investor-owned electric utility into a consumer-owned cooperative. Nearly five years later, with Gardiner serving as Chair of the organizing board, a financing package had been negotiated and put in place, all of the legal and political hurdles were cleared, and the Kaua‛i Island Utility Cooperative became a reality. Gardiner became KIUC’s first Board Chair, and was elected to serve on NRECA’s National Board representing Hawaii – the 47 th state with not-for-profit, member-owned electric cooperatives.

NRECA International Programs were launched in 1962 in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over time, NRECA has sent more than 650 American electric co-op specialists to more than 70 nations in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and countries of the former Soviet Union. NRECA-assisted rural electric projects worldwide provide electric service to more than 75 million people.

In addition to sending electric cooperative volunteers overseas, NRECA has provided organizational and management training in the United States for more than 500 representatives from 30 nations. Hundreds of U.S. cooperative electric utilities have hosted these visits in the past decade.

More than 11,000 representatives from cooperative electric utilities across the nation are attending the NRECA Annual Meeting, March 20-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, during which they will set NRECA’s legislative and organizational agenda for 2007. In addition to considering and acting upon policy resolutions, delegates receive reports from NRECA officials, hear addresses by key public figures and business experts, and attend panel sessions on major issues affecting electric cooperatives and their consumer owners.

NRECA is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 private, not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 40 million people in 47 states.