Energizing Equality and Women’s Power in Central America

This project aims to enhance gender equality and the socio-economic empowerment of women living in rural and isolated areas in El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras. It does so by improving access to entrepreneurships that foster renewable energy solutions and that increase women’s control over resources such as time income and the productive use of renewable energy. The project contributes to changing gender roles in private and public spaces at a community level. It lays the groundwork for scaling up towards inclusive and gender equitable renewable energy systems in the region. It also contributes to increasing women’s resilience in the face of a challenging future. It equips them to deal with climate change and with inequality that is made worse by poverty exclusion and further fuelled the COVID-19 pandemic. Project activities include: (1) developing a training program on the productive and domestic use of time and resources in the target communities; (2) providing technical assistance to women in the target communities to incubate entrepreneurships; (3) providing financial aid through a seed capital fund to female entrepreneurs from the target communities; (4) organizing a gender-sensitive capacity-building program for women on their individual and collective empowerment and political leadership; (5) providing training on organizational development to women’s organizations to help them reach women and engage them in discussions on gender energy and sustainable entrepreneurship; and (6) developing collaborative initiatives between women’s organizations on women’s leadership and meaningful participation in national decision-making spaces related to access and use of renewable energy.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved and more equitable access to sustainable entrepreneurships based on the productive use of renewable energy by women in El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras; and (2) enhanced and more significant engagement of women in public leadership and decision-making related to the productive use of renewable energy in Central America.