Gender and Energy Innovation Facility

Hivos/ENERGIA, EnDev and MECS launch Gender and Energy Innovation Facility

The project is innovation-oriented to overcome persistent gender barriers and reinforce sustainable development.

As ENERGIA and Hivos stated, energy access is fundamental and essential for satisfying basic human needs, reducing poverty, safeguarding our health, and pursuing educational and economic opportunities. However, with worldwide 789 million people without access to electricity and 2.8 billion without access to clean cooking solutions, the world is off-track in meeting universal energy access for all. Advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly in relation to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 on universal access to energy and SDG 5 on gender equality, requires a better understanding of women’s and men’s specific needs for modern and clean energy services and products. Women often face persistent challenges in energy access and modern cooking. This limits their full participation and locks their socio-economic potential to pursue income-generating activities, scale up existing clean energy businesses and advocate for their independence, agency and rights.

Gender innovation, i.e. gender approaches, processes, practices for energy access is almost an unexplored area. With this in mind, Hivos/ENERGIA, EnDev and MECS have established the Gender and Energy Innovation Facility, aiming at promoting new insights to overcome some persistent and tenacious challenges to scale up energy access in a gender-inclusive way.

The Facility is especially looking for innovations on 1) gender and energy entrepreneurship and employment, 2) gender and energy in the care economy, and 3) gender in energy policy and practice.

The Facility is implemented in three countries, Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal. The Impact House team’s contribution is in mentoring participants regarding innovation. The Impact House team participates in the implementation of a Bootcamp to develop an innovative idea as an experiment that will create disruption in the field of energy and gender equality. Our task is to instruct participants to respond in the most innovative way to the problem and needs of their community.

For more detailed information about the project, visit the official website of our clients.