Solar Sister
Model & Strategy
Solar Sister is a green energy revolution powered by women’s enterprise. Providing a grassroots solution to a global energy crisis, Solar Sister combines the breakthrough potential of clean energy technology with a deliberately women-centered direct sales network. Working in rural Africa, Solar Sister recruits, trains and supports women to become Solar Sister Entrepreneurs. The women build sustainable businesses selling solar lamps, mobile phone chargers and fuel efficient cook stoves. Using their natural networks of family, friends and neighbors to provide the most effective distribution channel to rural and hard to reach customers the women earn much needed income to support their families and provide a vital service to their communities. Access to clean energy and simple light has profound benefits including improved education, health and economic outcomes.
Katherine Lucey, founder and CEO of Solar Sister, brings 20 years investment banking and non-profit leadership experience to her role as social entrepreneur. She is an Ashoka East Africa Fellow and a winner of Social Venture Network 2011 Innovation Award and a Global Social Benefit Incubator Fellow for 2011 at the Santa Clara University Center for Science and Technology. Katherine currently serves on the UN Foundation initiative the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and is a co-chair of the Supply Chain and Entrepreneurship Committee of the Sustainable Energy for All Practitioner Network.
IMPACT
Solar Sister has built a network of more than 3,800 women entrepreneurs who earn income while bringing access to clean energy technologies to more than 1.5M people in Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria.
In the long term, Solar Sister provides livelihoods and energy access in rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa – breaking the cycle of poverty by creating economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs and access to energy for the women, their families, and their off-grid communities.
Solar Sister News
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Solar Sister thanks the International Development Innovation Alliance, @results4dev and @Sida Partnership Forum for… https://t.co/ac2RtVBeQp
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RT @jp_phillips10: “Why are we trying to put on the poorest 1 billion the responsibility for fully financing the basic need of electricity?…
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RT @SolarAid: Watch our very own SolarAid star Emily Bellis at #HPEDiscover talk about the importance of getting #solarlights to rural comm…
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What if you could increase #African women’s income and mitigate #climatechange at the same time? You can! Join us a… https://t.co/pQ1iCWJv7x
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My week on Twitter 🎉: 6 Mentions, 3.39K Mention Reach, 145 Likes, 60 Retweets, 717K Retweet Reach. See yours with… https://t.co/deSVcfQfdo
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Our biggest fans this week: Acumen, VincentCoyle1, SDG2030. Thank you! via https://t.co/2yWUl47Rgd
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Just as in many #STEM fields, women are underrepresented in the clean energy sector. This @IEA article profiles sev… https://t.co/kEDOevEnmH
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RT @KatherineHLucey: Seven women of solar energy! including @Solar_SIster cofounder Neha Misra @LightSolar https://t.co/KNp3F4Jcap From @…
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This article from @YaleE360 does an excellent job highlighting the importance of increasing clean energy access for… https://t.co/3edKAHCILS
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The latest The Solar Sister Daily! https://t.co/J8r60qY4kP Thanks to @whiteafrican @PamelaScully @paulakahumbu #worldoceansday #ict4d
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Let's give it up for Will Rogers Elementary school students! They hosted a student-built cardboard arcade event. Al… https://t.co/F7wCwoBC2T
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RT @ScalingOffGrid: What is @60_decibels? (A) The volume of human conversation (B) A new tech-enabled social impact measurement company spu…
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Olasimbo Sojinrin, our Nigeria Country Director, reports to us from the West Africa Regional Consultation in Conakr… https://t.co/9NQbjI7REl
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RT @KatherineHLucey: 🥰 this new partnership between @Solar_Sister and @PalmettoSolar that matches Palmetto's customer's purchase of solar p…
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RT @TheBeamMagazine: "Off-grid solutions are getting better: cheaper, longer-lasting, more environmentally-friendly. Thanks to new business…
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What do you do at night using a solar lantern that you could not do before? "make more baskets" "fetch water at n… https://t.co/pXzbMmGFUN
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Say hello to Solar Sister's newest leadership team member, Michele Morgan! Michele is serving as Solar Sister's Dev… https://t.co/L8iuRb6tGK
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Solar Sister's first entrepreneur in Tanzania, Hilaria Paschal, has gone beyond distributing clean energy solutions… https://t.co/oJHoV4VEvD
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Did you know that if women fulfilled the same economic potential as men, the global GDP would increase by $12 trill… https://t.co/SgIbnQRlYn