13. Kulchajam Cultural Organisation, NSW

Renewable Energy Project: Solar Panels, Muwinina

Kulchajam was a much-loved non-profit arts and cultural organisation in the Byron Bay Arts Industrial Estate. Kulchajam integrated social enterprise principles, sustainability, cultural exchange, and artistic excellence.

Project story…

CORENA provided a $6,000 loan in mid-2016 for their 6.24kW of solar PV. This would normally have cost a lot more but the local installer provided a very generous discount.

Initial loan repayments were a bit erratic, apparently due to financial difficulties, and Kulchajam ended up disbanding. Since they were renting their premises and had no money to fulfil our loan agreement, we wondered if this might be our first and only ‘bad debt”. But all’s well that ends well…thanks to the owner of the building.

After a ‘comedy of errors’ involving defunct email addresses, with wrong account details causing bouncing recurring payments that the owner did not notice were bouncing (and we did not know they were bouncing either of course), we received payment of the full outstanding amount in April 2020.

Despite a rocky repayment trajectory, the $6,000 we lent to Kulchajam had grown via our revolving fund to achieve $12,653 worth of climate goodness by mid 2020, and had avoided 45MWh of grid electricity.

This project is fully funded – Thank you!