Vicars Community Center GA

In Southwest Atlanta, Georgia, an innovative Black church has transformed their Vicars Community Center into the city's first solar-powered community resilience hub using federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. This initiative, a partnership with clean energy nonprofit Groundswell, equips the center with solar panels and battery storage, ensuring power for up to three days during emergencies. The hub provides critical services such as charging devices, refrigerating medications, and storing life-saving medical devices. Additionally, the church anticipates saving $6,000 annually on energy costs while significantly reducing carbon emissions.

The effort to create the resiliency hub came together in 2023 when Groundswell reached out to Pastor Earley after activists identified Community Church Atlanta as a key resource during local info-gathering meetings. At the height of the pandemic, Vicars Community Center offered COVID-19 tests and vaccines. It hosts meetings for local groups, as well as blood drives and low-cost health checks.

Groundswell connected the organization to $225,000 in donated philanthropic funding to upgrade the center with solar panels and batteries. The nonprofit will also soon help church leaders tap into those IRA tax credits. The nonprofit sees Vicars as a demonstration that can build support for other community-owned, small-scale solar projects, Williams says. Groundswell has been seeding similar resilience hubs elsewhere in Atlanta and Baltimore.