These were not for auction but Begam was training the women how to service a Solar Home System (SHS), cheap and simple solar equipment that provides electricity which a poor family can afford. On completion of the training, the women would not only be able to maintain the equipment and so sustain its useful life and assure their families of clean energy but also make a saving to the family as there would be no need to pay for the services of a technician.
Over 400 women in rural Bangladesh have been trained in servicing solar systems installed in their homes since 2010, courtesy of the Bright Green Energy Foundation (BGEF), which strives to provide access to clean energy to poor families in the rural areas.
By December last year (2015) four million solar homes systems had been installed while almost 50,000 SHS are being installed in rural homes every month.
Bearing in mind that some families could be unable to pay for the services of technicians to service and repair their SHS, BGEF designed the programme to train women from families who have installed solar systems so that they undertake servicing of their own equipment.
This saves money and ensures the family a sustainable supply of cheap electricity. The training programme also creates a positive social force at the village level for promotion of renewable energy technologies.
“By implementing this programme, those women who come from poor, disadvantaged families will be able to contribute to the family income, especially meeting the education and health needs of their their children,” explained Dipal Chandra Barua, chairman and founder of GGEF, to a group of Tanzanians who visited Bangladesh recently to learn about renewable energy initiatives and how Tanzania could borrow a leaf from the country in achieving 100 per cent use of renewable energy target as well as promote universal access to clean energy.
The Tanzania delegation comprised representatives from Parliament, the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, the civil society and the media.
Barua explained that besides repairing and maintaining their own SHS, the women also provide maintenance services to other community members and train other rural women to become ‘green technicians.’
“Some women technicians assemble and repair solar accessories for SHS out of which they can earn more than Tk6000 (approximately USD 76) per month. This is not a very big amount of money but it helps rural families to meet their needs,” he said.
“We have taken the assembling and repairing of solar accessories to the rural areas; at the users’ doorstep and created ‘green’ jobs for rural women while promoting women entrepreneurs of the future,” he added.
One beneficiary of the training programme, Rabeaya Islam, told the Tanzanian delegation that since installing SHS and learning to service it, life has become better for her family.
“My children can now study and do their homework at home because there is good light in the house during the evening. We are also earning extra income from neighbours who come to charge their mobile phones and we can also watch television,” she said.
The use of SHS in rural Bangladesh has also reduced the use of kerosene. According to research, about 500 people in developing countries use kerosene for cooking and lighting, using an estimated amount of 96 billion liters of kerosene annually.This brings to 96bn USD, an amount of money poor families have to spend on kerosene, basing on the assumption that one litre of kerosene is sold at one US dollar.
Moreover, experts say that emissions from the use of kerosene may affect breathing, increase infectious diseases such as TB, cause asthma and raise risks of cancer. Most of those who are affected are women and children.
In Tanzania there have been isolated cases of women trained to service and repair solar systems, mostly in urban settings. Besides covering small parts of the country and thus benefitting few people, such programmes have not been sustainable, leaving families who own SHS to depend on the services of private technicians who sometimes charge exorbitantly to service or repair such systems.
Some poor families in the rural areas have remained in the dark for months after their SHS have become defective because they could not get a qualified technician to repair the system or they couldn’t afford the cost of repair. Lack of regular maintenance has seen some of SHS breaking down and never being repaired.
“There have been few such programmes, I mean programmes that train rural poor women to repair their own SHS. But I think it is important that these programmes are introduced and sustained not only because they are cost-saving undertakings to the family but they also give the trained women a sense of ownership and responsibility. When there is no light in the house, it is the woman who is most concerned about the safety of the children and the whole family in general,” said Sixbert Mwanga, Country Coordinator of Climate Action Network (CAN Tanzania), who was head of the delegation.
He explained that currently, a family may be able to install SHS but since no one in the house knows how to service it or repair the smallest damage, it remains to be the property of the technician who installed it.
“This sort of limits the benefits of the SHS to only lighting and charging mobile phones and, to some extent, gives the family another financial burden, that of meeting the cost of servicing the system,” he said.
Speaking about the participation of women at the grass-roots level in scaling up access to renewable energy initiatives, Mary Swai of TatEDO, who was a member of the Tanzanian delegation, explained that the move taken by BGEF equips women with skills which they would otherwise have not been able to get.
“But it also instills confidence in them because they now know that they can handle equipment that is vital for the well-being of the family. They also become prepared to take more responsibility in their homes.
I think a rural woman who is trained feels proud and becomes more responsible for her family than someone who is not trained at all. Those who are trained also feel that they own the SHS because they can handle it, a feeling which would not be there if they had to depend on the services of a technician all the time,” she said.
BGEF seeks to promote and encourage women in the rural areas to become entrepreneurs and be part of a major component of a ‘green workforce’ for renewable energy expansion.
In line with this vision the organisation plans to train 100,000 women at the rural grassroots level by 2020 so that besides servicing their own SHS.They should also be able to set up their own renewable energy business by assembling solar accessories so as to meet the local demand. This will go hand in hand with the planned installation of 7.5 million SHS in the rural areas.
However, renewable energy is not all about SHS. BGEF also promotes the use of biogas in rural homes particularly for cooking and lighting. By March this year (2016) BGEF had installed in the rural areas 4,300 Improved Cook Stoves (ICS), and 115 biogas plants.
“Expanding the use of ICS to replace the traditional cooking stoves has protected women and children from indoor pollution and from serious health hazards,” said Barua, adding that renewable energy should reduce poverty, promote health of the rural poor and enhance sustainable development.
In one of its reports the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that over four million people die prematurely from illness due to household pollution from cooking with wood, charcoal, coal and dung. Most of those who die are poor and live in developing countries.
Speaking to the Tanzanian delegation, Dr Saleemul Huqfrom the International Centre for Climate Change said that changes must begin at the grassroots level where problems of the poor and the marginalized should be addressed.
“Transitioning from traditional sources of energy most of which are not friendly to the environment is a fundamental change towards sustainable development. The change must begin at the community level where the poor are most vulnerable and women must be the agents of this change,” he said.
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