When communities lead, climate action reaches further.

Image: Kambo Energy Group team.

Energy-saving programs, retrofits, and cost-cutting incentives only work if people know about them and can use them. But too often, they don’t reach the communities that need them most.

“For many immigrant and newcomer communities in British Columbia, the barrier is not a lack of interest in energy efficiency or climate action. It is that programs have not always been easy to access,” says Yasmin Abraham, President and Co-Founder of Kambo Energy Group.

For Yasmin, her brother and their father, that gap felt personal. As a second-generation immigrant family, they understood that climate solutions cannot be one-size-fits-all — they have to reflect the languages, cultures and lived experiences of the communities they are meant to serve.  

That belief led them to found Kambo Energy Group in 2009. Through Empower Me, its community-led program for newcomers, Kambo focuses on helping people access climate and energy programs.  

Climate access for communities, career pathways for mentors.

At the heart of their approach is a simple but powerful idea: solutions should come from within the communities they are meant to serve. Kambo hires energy mentors directly from the communities they work with, prioritizing cultural knowledge and lived experience over technical expertise.  

“We then provide the technical training they need, covering energy efficiency, retrofits, and climate programming,” says Yasmin.  

Each year, the program provides:

• Approximately 110 workshops across the Lower Mainland

• One-on-one support to around 2,500 community members

These interactions help people better understand how to reduce energy use, navigate available programs, and lower costs.  

But the program’s impact doesn’t stop there.  

For many mentors, Empower Me provides their first Canadian work experience and a steppingstone into the climate and energy sector. Through their roles, mentors gain technical knowledge, professional networks, and confidence to pursue long-term careers.

“We’ve seen people go on to roles with municipalities, government and organizations like BC Hydro, and that’s exactly the kind of pathway we want to create,” says Yasmin.  

A partnership built on trust.

Vancity has supported Kambo’s work since 2015 — a continuity Yasmin says has helped the organization grow from an emerging initiative into a trusted community climate leader.

“What I’ve really appreciated about Vancity is their approach to granting and the trust they place in us. It’s not a top-down approach. It’s very relationship-based and a true partnership,” says Yasmin.

That trust matters because Empower Me is built on community leadership. Rather than prescribing solutions, Yasmin says Vancity has trusted Kambo and the communities it works with to know what will be most effective.

“I feel like we always have champions behind us, that kind of support means a lot to me and to our team,” she says.  

As climate challenges grow more urgent, Kambo’s work shows what inclusive climate action can look like in practice: programs shaped by the people they are meant to serve, and pathways that help community members become leaders in the climate sector.