a-project: ENERGIA Phase 5
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Last Mile Learning: How local assistance and trust motivate last-mile customers
MIT CITE research finds that Solar Sister’s model built on social networks and women entrepreneurs is reaching last-mile consumers. Research also shows that last-mile consumers place considerable importance on local after-sales services and purchasing from people they know and trust when it comes to solar energy. Read full entry.
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ENERGIA’s Sheila Oparaocha at the SDG7 Conference
In Bangkok, the SDG7 conference is well underway and ends tomorrow on 23 February. The conference on SDG7 is a global preparatory meeting in support of the review of SDG7 at the 2018 UN High-level Political Forum. ENERGIA’s Sheila Oparaocha addressed the audience at the opening plenary session on the second day of the conference. She spoke about energy access and the…
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Senegal takes a giant leap towards gender mainstreaming in national energy policies and programmes
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #2 of 3 After three years advocating for gender mainstreaming in national energy policies and programmes in Senegal, Energy 4 Impact with funding from ENERGIA*, has achieved important milestones: The SEforALL national documents, the Action Agenda and the Investment prospectus integrate a comprehensive gender perspective with clear…
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Helping women entrepreneurs scale-up rural supply chains to reach last mile markets
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #1 of 3 Energy access and development practitioners seem to agree that ending energy poverty for the most deprived populations and achieving sustainable development is impossible without the involvement of women. Women are not only the users of household energy; if given the opportunity, they can play a critical role…
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Women’s economic empowerment project enhances entrepreneurs’ business acumen and accelerates renewable energy access in Senegal
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #3 of 3 A recent evaluation study examining the effectiveness of Energy 4 Impact’s Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) project in rural Senegal, reveals increased business acumen and confidence among trained women entrepreneurs, as well as increased awareness of clean energy products and their benefits among the local…
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A step towards energy-access equality in Ghana
By Melissa Ruggles* Ghana has made great progress towards equalising energy access this year with the launch of its Social and Gender Integration Plan (SGIP) in October. Ghana’s Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) will oversee implementation of the action plan, which aims to ensure greater energy equality by addressing social inequalities among men, women and vulnerable…
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Advancing women’s leadership to tackle the impacts of climate change
By Melissa Ruggles/ENERGIA In her speech leading up to the COP23 in Bonn (6-17 November), Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s top climate change official, highlights the need to “significantly increase our efforts to reduce emissions and our carbon footprints,” and that “women must be at the forefront” of driving those efforts. Espinosa and others have been…
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Keeping the Lights On: ENERGIA and Solar Sister’s successful partnership leverages women’s power to tackle energy poverty
By Melissa Ruggles* 2,371 women entrepreneurs recruited, trained and mentored, leading to 772,925 people with access to cleaner energy. These figures show how ENERGIA and Solar Sister have been transforming clean energy access for people in Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania since becoming partners in September 2014. For four years now, Solar Sister has been a…
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An Interview with Sheila Oparaocha: “Others have recognised the credibility of our key messages”
As the international coordinator and programme manager, Sheila Oparaocha is directly responsible for ENERGIA’s activities across the world. When she is not strategising, participating in conference calls and meetings at her office in the Netherlands, she is likely speaking at a high level forum, helping steer other organisations and efforts related to gender and energy,…
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Cultivating women’s inner strength and capacities for entrepreneurship
Dr. Anita Shankar discusses agency building, ENERGIA’s work, and how women are empowered from the inside out. When you hear the word ‘agency’, the first thing that may come to mind is a physical entity, a building with people working away in an office, a travel agency, a recruitment agency, a government department, and so…
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Innovative public outreach in Indonesia
By Neva Nahtigal Kopernik, our partner in Indonesia, has been working to improve public understanding of issues related to women and energy access. At the core of their recent activities in pursuit of that goal is the Indonesian Women for Energy – or #IDWOMEN4ENERGY – campaign. As Kopernik’s communications officer Ina Saptiono explained, “This…
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PRESS RELEASE: Women need a seat at the clean energy table
Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania – On August 24, 2017, Solar Sister, in collaboration with the UN Foundation-led Energy Access Practitioner Network and ENERGIA will host a workshop to highlight the need for more meaningful inclusion of women in clean energy access value chains and policies. Solar Sister will also launch new research from the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship on the benefits of its…