>> stephanie bechler: hello everyone. i'mstephanie bechler with the national renewable energy laboratory. and welcome to today'swebinar which is hosted by the clean energy solution center in partnership with the unf'sfoundation's energy access practitioner network and the arizona state university. today'swebinar is focused on vocational training for energy access, impacts and lessons learnedfrom developing countries. one important note of mention before we begin our presentationis that the clean energy solution center does not endorse or recommended specific productsor services. information provided in this webinar is featured in the solution centerresource library as one of many best practice resources reviewed and selected by technicalexperts.
before we begin i'll quickly go over someof the webinar features. for audio you have two options. you may either listen throughyour computer or over the telephone. if you choose to listen through the computer, pleaseselect the mic and speakers option in the audio pane. and if you choose to dial in byphone please select the telephone option in the box on the right hand, and the box onthe right hand side will display the number and audio pin. if you have any technical difficultieswith the webinar you can contact the go to webinar help desk at 888-259-3826 for assistance.if you would like to ask a question we ask that you use the questions pane where youcan type it in. if you are having difficulty viewing the materialsthrough the webinar portal you will find pdf
copies of the presentations at cleanenergysolutions.org/trainingand you can also follow along with the speakers. there will be an audio recording and presentationswill be posted to the solution center training page within a few weeks and will also be addedto the solution center youtube channel where you can find other informative webinars. today's agenda is centered around the presentationsfrom our guest panelists, dr. rim razzouk, carol weis, dr. laura stachel and rachel mahmud,mahmud. these panelists have been kind enough to join us to introduce the vocational trainingand education for clean energy and to discuss other training programs and highlight theimportance of such programs in developing countries also sharing lessons learned, sharinglearning outcomes particularly for training
focusing on women. before our speakers begintheir presentations i'll provide an informative overview of the clean energy solution centerand luc severi will provide an overview of the energy access practitioner network. thenfollowing the presentations we will have a q&a session where the panelists will addressquestions submitted by the audience followed by closing remarks and a brief [break in audio]. this slide, this next slide provides a bitof background in terms of how the solution center came to be. the solution center isone of 13 initiatives of the clean energy ministerial that was launched in april of2011. it's primarily led by australia, the united states and other cem partners. outcomesof this unique initiative include support
of developing countries and emerging economiesthrough enhancement of resources on policies relating to energy access, no cost expertpolicy assistance and peer to peer learning and training tools such as the webinar youare attending today. the solution center has four primary goals.it serves as a clearing house of clean energy policy resources. it also serves to sharepolicy best practices, data and analysis tools specific to clean energy policies and programsand the solution center delivers dynamic services that enable expert assistance, learning andpeer to peer sharing of experiences. and finally the center fosters dialogue on emerging policyissues and innovation around the globe. our primary audience is energy policy makers andanalysts from governments and technical organizations
in all countries but we also strive to engagewith the private sector, ngos and civil society. a marquee feature of the solution center isthe no cost expert policy assistance known as ask an expert. the ask an expert programhas established a broad team of over 30 experts from around the globe who are available toprovide remote policy advice and analysis to all countries at no cost. for example,in the area of clean energy policy and assistance we are very pleased to have terry walters,president and founder of [inaudible] consulting serving as one of our experts. if you everhave a need for policy assistance in clean energy policy or any other clean energy sectorwe encourage you to use this valuable service. again the assistance is provided free of chargeand if you have any questions for our experts
please submit it through our simple onlineforum at cleanenergysolutions.org/expert. we also encourage you to spread the word aboutthis service to those in your networks and other organizations. and now i'd like to provide a brief introductionto today's panelists. first up is luc severi, project manager for energy access at the unitednations foundation. luc will provide an overview of the un foundation work on scaling energyaccess in developing countries through its 2000 plus member strong energy access practitionernetwork. following luc, we'll have dr. rim razzouk. she is the senior instructional designerat arizona state university. in her current position dr. razzouk leads the curriculumdevelopment and assessment and evaluation
process for the vocational training and educationfor clean energy project. following dr. razzouk we will hear from carol weis, lead programinstructor with lead care solar. carol has worked on as a solar electric instructor andconsultant in the u.s. and internationally teaching coed and women only classes since1998. her work has included projects in asia, africa, the caribbean and central america. our next speaker is dr. laura stachel, cofounderand executive director of we care solar. laura is the champion for sustainable energy solutionsfor women's health and speaks around the world on this topic. she has been active in theun foundation's sustainable energy for all initiative and co-chairs a working group onenergy and health. our final panelist today
is rachel muhmad, a gender associate for globalalliance for clean cook stoves. she is responsible for managing grants that support women's empowermentand youth awareness raising in clean cooking sector. she also supports the design and managementof the alliance's gender program. and with those introductions i would like to welcomeluc to the webinar. >> luc severi: hello. good morning or goodafternoon or good evening depending on where you're calling in from. my name is luc severi.i'm a project manager working on energy access with the united nations foundation. thankyou, stephanie for the introduction and thank you and your colleagues for all the work inbringing all of this together. welcome everyone to this webinar on vocational training forenergy access. before the speakers talk about
their experiences and their lessons learnedin this domain i will just briefly present a couple of introductory slides. i think by far by now almost everyone callingin knows that we have more than a billion people around the world still who, still withoutaccess to electricity and actually many more only have intermittent or unreliable access.to address this challenge the international energy agency estimates that about 60 percentof the new energy will have to be met by distributed energy solutions, mainly off grid mini gridsolutions. the global initiative tackling this challenge is se for all, stands of coursefor sustainable energy for all which i assume is by now well known to all as are the threekey targets on the energy access on energy
efficiency as well as on the share of renewablesin the energy mix. these targets are also mirrored in sdg7 which plays a key part inunlocking and achieving many of the other sdgs as well. now a few words on the energy access practitionernetwork which is united nations foundation's contribution to sustainable energy for all.the network which is still growing now counts 2,300 members with truly a global coverageas you can see from the numbers listed on this slide. more than half of the membersare private sector market led organizations with operations primarily in developing andemerging countries. as the graph also shows the circle in the middle of the slide it alsocovers many small and medium enterprises which
i think has a very large value. the energyaccess practitioners network aims to promote new technologies and the financial and businessmodels. it provides a platform for global collaboration and information exchange andthirdly it also facilitates the development and adoption of quality standards. now on to the topic of today's webinar ontechnical capacity and vocational training. from our own experience and also from ournetwork i'd just like to present two of the main key considerations. firstly, there isthe quality of training which needs to be considered so of course needs to be technicalbut also needs to be practical. it needs to be cognoscente of international best practicesand it's also important to insure that gender
is mainstreamed at all levels at curriculumdevelopment but also at the deployment of the training. secondly, there are different levels of trainingto ensure that there's long term sustainability and operationality of the energy solutions.it is important to transfer operational and technical knowledge at multiple levels wherewith end users for example it will be more on the operational side and making sure thatlight bulbs can be changed and that solar panels can be cleaned. at a more maybe a districtlevel of a central level this will be more on the technical, on repair, on more advancedmaintenance and even on supply chain. i think it's just – it's important to acknowledgewhether the current experiences on the ground
and what do we want to see in place at thedifferent levels. it should never be the goal to turn nurses or teachers into electricians. so to end before i pass the controls to mycolleagues on this webinar i would like to refer you to the energy access practitionernetwork on the website which is mentioned on this slide, energyaccess.org. joining isfree of charge and through the network we communicate on funding, on investment opportunities,on knowledge, on information sessions such as this webinar which we are also live tweetingunder the hash tag pnwebinar. pn stands for practitioner network. now i would like youall to sit back and enjoy the rest of the webinar. back to you, stephanie.
>> stephanie bechler: thank you so much, luc.we will now begin with a presentation from dr. rim razzouk. rim, it's all you. >> rim razzouk: thank you stephanie. can yousee actually my presentation? >> stephanie bechler: yep. everything looksgreat. >> rim razzouk: thank you very much. goodmorning everybody. thank you stephanie and luc for the introductions and thank you everybodyfor joining us today in today's webinar. i'm going to briefly talk about the vocationaltraining and education for clean energy programs, its components, some accomplishments and lessonslearned. so the vocational training and education for clean energy program is a global programinitially funded by the united states for
international development and then by arizonastate university. it aims to improve the sustainability of renewable energy infrastructure and investmentsin developing countries by increasing awareness, knowledge and capacity of local stakeholdersprimarily in the centralized clean energy technologies such as solar photovoltaic, windand micro hydro. one of our major objectives – one of theprogram major objectives actually to build local capacity to operate and maintain cleanenergy systems. this objective is achieved through the development and the transfer ofcurricula because we in voctec we contextualize curricula and specific technologies for localneeds. it is also achieved through strengthening institutional capacity and this is by developingtraining centers and providing the necessary
tool kits and curriculum, through trainingof educators and staff and integration of nontechnical curricula such as gender inclusion,entrepreneurship and effective teaching skills. and in voctec we also incorporate assessment,the assessment and evaluation process to assess and evaluate the impacts of the trainings. and i'm going to speak briefly about thesetwo. voctec is a multi-tier vocational training program that delivers trainings in three differentareas, solar photovoltaic, micro hydro and small wind on three different levels, trainthe trainer model or the educators, trained technicians and policy makers. the voctecprogram includes several components. these components are mainly in each training. iwill start with our mobile training tool kit.
so the mobile training tool kit is actuallya lab in a box that we use for the hands on, for the hands on training in our trainingsfor technical training. we have the classroom material and this includes modules that incorporatetechnical and nontechnical material for the classroom and handbooks. we have the onlineenvironment and the online which is the online learning platform or virtual learning environmentthat includes repository of content and material and discussion forums. we also provide supportingmaterials such as posters, manuals, end user posters. we also developed some educationalgames to reinforce some skills in specific areas such as troubleshooting or sizing asolar photovoltaic system. and in voctec trainings too incorporate someacademic process which is the assessment and
evaluation process to measure impacts andoutcomes of the trainings. as i also mentioned we incorporate the nontechnical, nontechnicalcurriculum which is across the whole curriculum of the trainings to – and this includessocial awareness and gender inclusion to achieve participation among women and disadvantagedgroups and other modules can include project management and entrepreneurship. so far through usaid funds so far voctec delivered37 trainings on the three different levels, solar, micro hydro and wind. as of today wetrained 320 technicians, 200 educators and 115 policy makers in different regions suchas the pacific islands, africa and asia. this slide summarizes some of the voctec usaidtrainings that we've been doing since 2012.
so far we've been in pacific islands, africa,asia and other places. so we have four of these trainings are mainly all woman as well. so because of voctec's holistic approach thatincluded not only the technical components but also the nontechnical, the hands on activitiesand the assessment and evaluation processes voctec has broadened geographically by attractingalso new partner organizations such as the inter-american development bank, the internationalrenewable energy agency, european union, the asian development bank and also has broadenedits service portfolio to include regional certifications program for example in westafrica. so as we can see here on this map now voctec is in many regions around the worldsuch as asia, africa, caribbean and the pacific
islands. this is originally voctec started with twopartners, the [inaudible] and green empowerment and now it has actually expanded. so theseare some of the partners and sponsors to list a few. as of today the in total we trainedthrough usaid fund and other funds we actually trained 620 technicians, 200 educators, 115policy makers and 20 entrepreneurs. in this section i'm going to speak about some keyaccomplishments and then transfer the presentation to miss carol weis who is actually joiningme on this presentation as well to speak about some gender inclusion and women empowermentexamples in real world. so one of the accomplishments actually developinga complete solar curricula and the development
of the mobile training tool kit. we've developedcurriculum. our curriculum usually in voctec training for the solar photovoltaic is like50/50 classroom lectures to hands on exercises and we developed the mobile training toolkit as i mentioned before which is the lab on a go and it includes as you can see onthe right hand side you can see that it includes not only the training tool kit but also theexercises by subject area. so it has the manual with every tool kit. we have two versionsof this training tool kit, the expanded version and the light version which is a smaller versionbut includes exactly the same components and the same activities. it's just lighter weight. we also created interactive games. we haveposters for end users and the pre and post
assessment and surveys. and all of these areactually for the purpose of strengthening institutional capacity. so we have the twoeducational games for solar pv. why we decided to create or incorporate educational gamesin the voctec curriculum because games in general assist in learning about a certaintopic and concepts and to reinforce the development of the skill or a concept in a fun and interactiveway. it also gives the learners the freedom to experiment because they can keep repeatingthe game and teach them how to set goals while providing them with feedback. it also enhancestheir problem solving skills and in a way they can actually relate to the real worldlearning environment and the hands on activities. so the first game that we – so through voctecwe created two games, the solar pv troubleshooting
game which is where the learner actually cantroubleshoot different components such as the load, converter, charge controller, batteryand others systematically and then identify and fix the problem. the second game is actuallythe solar pv system sizing. and it includes five mini games that mirror the proper sizingsteps for sizing a small solar pv system. one of the important components in our voctectraining which is originally maybe a more academic approach is applying the assessmentand evaluation model in a vocational setting to measure knowledge acquisition, skill applicationand aptitudes of the learners or the trainees. why this is important because the assessmentand evaluation process is a very important part of the training program because not onlybecause it provides the feedback on the trainees'
performance and learning and effectivenessof instructions but also because the feedback and the insight gained allow us to improvethe current and future training and training programs. the model that we've been using is actuallyadapted from the kirkpatrick evaluation model and it includes four measures. the first measureis actually reaction. that measures the participant's perception of and the satisfaction with thedesign and the delivery of the training program. the second measure is learning. that measuresthe extent to which the participants acquire new knowledge and skills. the third measureis behavior. that measures the participant's ability to apply the newly learned knowledgeand skills following the training. and the
last one is actually impact. that measuresthe long term impact of the training on the trainee's knowledge acquisition and applicationof skills. some of the lessons learned that we gainedthroughout the voctec training and those are some of them and miss carol weis is goingto speak about more later on in her section. first we learned that strong partnershipsare very critical for sustainability and not only for the implementation of the program.having infrastructure and resources are very important for long term sustainability. andwe've been doing that also through building institutional capacity and providing the mobiletraining tool kits to our partners and institutions and the curriculum that some institutionsalso have been integrating in their curriculum.
evaluating the trainees learning performancemotivates them to succeed because it makes them take things more seriously as well. sothis is one of the lessons learned too. another lesson learned is following up with the traineesis actually challenging specifically when we are doing that in developing countriesdue to lack of connectivity or it's hard at many cases to reach the trainees after sixor eight months from the training to assess their knowledge again. so this has been avery challenging experience in that case. definitely diversity of the languages shouldbe always taken into consideration and knowing – so in our case we created the online platformfor example but in many countries because of internet connectivity as well we had tosave things for example on flash drive. so
give them the online platform on usb so theycan actually directly use and download on their computers because of lack of connectivity. one of the major accomplishments through thevoctec training is actually empowering women and the gender inclusion. so we were actuallysuccessful in conducting almost all women, for all women training in different countries.so 2015 we conducted an all-woman training in kenya and in 2016 as well in kenya andin india in 2016 we conducted a training that was almost 85 percent women. and in nepaltoo voctec delivered a training for an all-woman training in nepal. so voctec will plan actuallyto keep expanding and utilizing that developed curriculum and the mobile training tool kitsand the other materials to seek new opportunities
in the future. and before handing the presentation to misscarol weis to talk about some real world examples about and lessons learned from women trainingsand gender inclusion i'd like to thank you all for joining us today and i need to mentionthat my contact information will be at the end of the presentation after miss carol weisis done. and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or if you'd likemore information about voctec. thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the webinar. backto you stephanie. >> stephanie bechler: thank you so much forthat. next for the next portion of this presentation we will go to miss carol weis. carol?
>> carol weis: ok. so can you see my screen? >> stephanie bechler: yes, we can. that looksgreat. >> carol weis: all right. ok. thank you somuch rim and thank you stephanie and the unf for organizing this. good morning everyone.my name is carol weis and i am an independent solar electricity trainer. and i originallystarted working as an electrician and a solar installer in the united states and now i workall over internationally also. my presentation to start with i'm going to talk about thevoctec women's solar class specifically in kenya. and then i'm going to move to discussthe importance of women's trainings and then i'm going to close with some general commentsabout training programs.
so to start in 2015 i was asked to be thelead technical trainer at voctec's first women's train the trainer course in kenya. and strathmoreuniversity was the local partner and they had held some coed classes in the past andtried to attract women to come to the classes. but their classes were predominantly male.so this class in 2015 was actually publicized as an all-women's class and 18 women attended. these participants that attended were highlyeducated women with a large number of electrical engineers and phds including professors andlecturers and community organizers. and i co-taught this course with teddy alabega whois an engineer from strathmore university and we felt it was really important to havewomen leading the technical lectures and all
of the hands on and that's what we did. andthen ambica [inaudible] who is pictured in the middle is a program manager from asu andhe came for the first several days to teach the nontechnical sessions such as entrepreneurship. so by the second day of this class this highly,highly motivated group had already started organizing themselves, the participants. theywere so engaged and interested with being with all women that were in the trades thatthey wanted to continue to empower women in renewable energy after the class ended. sothis group has now formally been named wise, women in sustainable energy and entrepreneurship.and pictured here is one of the local kenyan participants, tamizan, who is one of the mainorganizers of the group. so i wanted to highlight
some of their goals. they have many goalsand so i'm just going to touch on a few. but they are interested in building women'scapacity in kenya in renewable energy on many levels. so they want to continue educatingand design, installation and maintenance. they want to educate county policy makersand they want to engage with women end users. and what i find really interesting is thatone of the benchmarks that they set for themselves as a near term goal is that they want to increasethe number of solar licenses held by women to 10 percent. so they want to help mentorthe women that go through their program to help achieve this goal. so they took off running. this group they, as through the first trainthe trainers session they received all of
the pv curriculum from the voctec projectand the wise members organized their first women's technician class that same year. sothey did this in partnership with asu and strathmore university. and all of the trainerswere from that first class. so teddy, tamizan and another woman carolyn mckenzie they werethe main instructors. and then two other members of wise who were trainers at the technicalcolleges there in nairobi assisted with the hands on labs. so it was all local women trainersand it was all women participants. and so as a note there were 50 applicantsfor that class that only had 25 spots. so it really goes to show that there was a demandand an increase in the demand as the word got out that there was women only classes.by teaching this class not only was the goal
of training women realized but there was alsoa resulting increase of women's solar licenses. so as you can see in the slide 16 of the total267 solar licenses in kenya were held by women. of those 16 women 4 came directly from the2 women's trainings in 2015 or 25 percent of those people. and then there's four morewomen registered to sit for the next exam with two more ready once they get their practicalexperience. so they are well on their way of achieving this goal. wise has already started a mentoring processfor women to gain employable skills. so women are studying together for their electricalexam. they're sharing job opportunities that they have seen in the field. and women whoare already in the field are providing hands
on job experience for women that are justtrying to enter the field. so in this picture we have daisy who is in the first all-women'sclass seen mentoring another member of wise who needed practical experience to sit forher exam. so in march of 2016 i was fortunate enoughto be invited back to the women's train the trainer class and again there was a very highcaliper of student that attended this course. there was many technical trades professorsand lecturers present as well as one woman from the energy regulatory commission andanother woman from kenya power. and it's worthy to note that for this class 75 women appliedto attend and there were only 25 spots. so again this is demonstrating that there isa demand for these types of women only classes.
this time in the train the trainers classteddy took the lead role as the instructor and i assisted her. she really took a strongstep into a leadership position as this was her third class that she had taught as anall-women's class. tamizan took ambica's spot teaching the nontechnical sections about entrepreneurshipand gender inclusion and she really plays a role model for the students because shehad a lot of hands on experience in her past. and this time we tried something new and wehad the participants get up in front of the class and practice their teaching skills asmany of these women are lecturers themselves. since i've been teaching women's renewableenergy classes since 1998i get asked this question all the time. why do you have tohave women's only classes? why can't women
just attend the regular coed classes? andso the answer that i give and that i've observed over and over as an instructor is that womensimply do not come out to coed classes in significant numbers. in fact, women participantsthey answer this question by saying that they feel more comfortable in a women's only class,that they feel less intimidated to learn new skill sets. they find it easier to try outnew tools in this type of environment as many of the women have not used hand tools andpower tools and specialized solar tools before this training. women are excited to meet other women whoare in the same field with the same background, with the same future interests and it canbe very, very powerful and i've even heard
life changing for some women to be surroundedwith all other technical women. because of many of these women as they're going throughtheir engineering classes they are not seeing other women. or if they're at the electricaljob site they don't see other women. or if in their trade school departments they'renot seeing other women. so this is an area where they can meet their key relation, theycan make key relationships with other women in the field. and women take huge pride afterthey have learned how to use the tools, wire up the electronics and they see their lightturn on for the first time. you can see on their face that they take a lot of pride inthis. so beyond naming the benefits to the womenparticipants these classes also benefit women
instructors by allowing teachers a comfortableenvironment to build their teaching skills. so teddy, she co-instructed the first classwith me which then gave her more confidence to lead the second class. and then with herin the lead role other women co-teachers were invited in to assist in the class and buildtheir skills. and in my own life i'm extremely grateful to have started my teaching careerby teaching women's only classes which in turn gave me the confidence to eventuallybe the only woman in the room which many of the classes that i teach today i am the onlywoman in the room because it is a traditionally male field. the reason we need to make these less intimidatingenvironments for women to learn in is that
we need women present. we need their perspectivepresent to create a clean energy future. we need women like anupa who is reaching localimpoverished women and making them a priority to be trained, who is pictured on the lefthere and then pictured on the right. we need more women like mercy who is a technical trainerand she's a role model at her technical college. she's helping encourage women students ather school to stick with the program and creating more inclusive environments. we need womento push for funding that insists on including women in renewable energy programs. we need people like pam bollinger who is picturedright here who works for usaid and she's the main funder of the – usaid is the main funderof the voctec program and she is the main
advocate for the voctec women's classes. sopam was actually a student of mine in 2008 and she attended an all-women's two week courseand she saw firsthand the benefits of being in a course like that. so when she heard – whenit became apparent that women were not substantially represented in the voctec programs she pushedto have a women's only class. and from what i understood or what i understandfrom talking with all of the parties is that initially there's a lot of skepticism of offeringthe women's only classes thinking well, if they're – if women aren't coming to thecoed class why is that going to change. but as i've shown and as we've seen the numbersit really turned out to be a great success. so in closing i want to wrap up my presentationand deviate a little bit about talking just
of the work that i've done with the voctecwomen's classes and share some personal conclusions from being solar pv trainer for many organizationsover the past 17 years. and as you'll notice i stopped showing pictures of all women inthe slideshow because we – there's a lot of male technicians that are coming to theclasses and we need them also. so at this time the industry has now matured to the pointthat we need to broaden our trainings. and we're all realizing that in order to growthe industry at the rate that's needed to meet all of the renewable energy targets thatwe have put out there we need to be inclusive of all people which means elevating localtrainers who can work within their communities and using existing trades institutions tocreate renewable training centers.
and i just wanted to pose some questions hereand some ideas is that these training centers in order to have a highly trained workforceat the end we really need to focus on individual skill sets. so trainings cannot be a one sizefits all. we have to ask ourselves who is the audience. and if we are trying to traindesigners as our first group they would have – they would need to know a specific skillset so they would need knowledge of computer software, electrical layout, analyzing loaddemand and evaluating solar specific equipment, all of the specifications, etc. this would be in contrast with an installertraining. for an installer training it would be very different. it would be reading electricalschematics and making on the site decisions
about hardware to use to install the specificsolar electric system in a safe way that needs specialized safety training for installationand commissioning and they need to know how to use all of their personal protective equipment.and installing new equipment somewhere is very different than being the on-site maintenancetechnician who would need a very specific training on the exact equipment that's installedin the facility that they're working at which could be what is the weekly and monthly maintenanceto these, how do i trouble shoot this equipment, collecting data from the meters on the invertersand controllers, etcetera. and finally we really need to make sure thatall three of those categories of people can communicate to our end user about how to usethe system because these are the people that
will be interfacing with the system everyday for the next 20 years. and so they need to know how to work with the system and reduceloads if they need to or what they do – figure out what to do if there's cloudy weather,etcetera. so in my last slide the people who are offering trainings really need to be thinkingabout beyond the training, about how to help students transition into the clean energyindustry. and so questions that need to be asked beforethe training are things like what types of jobs will the graduates from this trainingprogram be prepared to work at after this training. so this is a way that we can evaluateour training programs that have been created to see if students really have marketableskills that are needed in the workforce and
that they can be hired after a training. the second question is is the market developedenough to employ trained students. so training for the sake of training is great and nicebut it needs to be targeted and we need to look at the market needs and what types ofemployees they need. so special work may need to be done in conjunction with other businessorganizations or at the policy level to help develop a renewable energy market to createjobs for this newly trained workforce. and then lastly is the program assisting studentsto enter the workforce as apprentices? because for some of the shorter trainings they arejust getting enough training to be dangerous. right? so they need to have that next stepof learning on the job. so we need to make
mentoring partnership opportunities for thestudents. so that concludes my presentation. thank you so much. and this is the contactinformation for both rim and myself. >> stephanie bechler: carol, thank you somuch. that was really excellent. our next presenter today is laura and laura the flooris now yours. and laura we're not able to hear you right now. oh there you go. >> laura stachel: ok. can you see my slide? >> stephanie bechler: yes, we can and we canhear you great. >> laura stachel: great. well, thank you carol.that was really, really excellent and, rim, it was really great to hear both of you andi think that what i'm going to do as the executive
director of we care solar is just give anotherexample of a training program. and i think that i'll be demonstrating some of the thingsthat the last two speakers have already spoken about. unlike the last two speakers i'm actuallya physician rather than an engineer or electrician or technical person but i think what thisspeaks to is how important it is for lots of different types of people to be gettingtraining as we try and improve energy access around the world. my organization is called we care solar. andwe care solar focuses on bringing small solar electric systems to the developing world forthe purposes of maternal healthcare in particular. it came from work that i did many years agoin nigeria. one second, i'm trying to change
the slide. so in nigeria i began working in2008 to try and look at ways to lower maternal mortality in the hospitals and small medicalcenters and realized while i was doing observations that there was a really lack of reliable electricityin many health centers and that part of the women, part of the reason that many womenand newborns were dying during childbirth had to do with lack of energy access of thehealth providers. so there was no lighting at night. there was no power for some of the medicalequipment and that led my husband and i on a journey to try and provide small solar electricsystems to a lot of outlying clinics. what you're seeing in this picture is one of theearly solar electric systems that we put together
that probably is not very dissimilar fromthat kit that asec has been using through voctec to try and train people on the basicsof solar electricity. this was a kit that was put together by hal erinson who is myhusband and a solar educator to try and allow me to bring something fairly simple into clinics.and initially all of the work that we did was through volunteers who each had theirown modifications of these systems. so what i'm going to show you now is justsome of the different solar electric systems that we put together. all of them were focusingon 12-volt dc and were kind of miniatures of larger solar electric systems that halhad designed for hospitals but was something small enough that i could pack in my suitcaseand bring with me directly to health clinics.
over time this evolved into something we calledthe solar case which includes solar panels, a controller, batteries and then the end appliancesthat we thought were very important to use in the health facilities. so there was medicalquality lighting. there was headlamps to supplement overhead lights, fetal doppler which is amonitor used to check on a baby's heartbeat, phone charging so that health providers couldcall for emergency transport or for backup help. and then these solar electric kits could actuallybe enlarged by bringing in larger panels and batteries and could be used to power additionaldevices such as the laptop computer in this picture and in a couple of cases we've usedthem for blood bank refrigeration. some of
the features that were really important inthe design of the solar suitcase was to make these both easy for end users who were nottechnical people, people like midwives and nurses who were in the hospitals to be ableto use the equipment. and as well something very easy for installers to use because weweren't relying on professional installers. we were first using people from our own teamsand then we were trying to use local technicians, drivers, health providers themselves to becomethe installers and that's what i'll be illustrating in the next slides. initially the trainings were really primarilyfocused on the end users and so i would carry these solar electric kits to health centers.i would usually bring with me a couple of
staff. at that point everybody was volunteersto do installations and then we would basically do an installation and be providing instructionto health providers so this for example are nigerian women who were in a local hospital.we also realized that some of the health providers themselves were not very conversant in englishand so we began to train people locally to help with teaching in the local languages.so in northern nigeria the language that we used was [inaudible]. we also saw that in clinics posters were akey element of education for any type of healthcare workers and so we developed a poster thatwas focused on proper use of the solar suitcase emphasizing some of the key parts of our training.
in sierra leone we worked with someone whotaught in the local language which was kind of a pigeon english there. and so where wecould we would train local midwives to become the trainers themselves. in those days mostof the installations were done with a lead installer. in this case you can actually seecarol weis who was volunteering with us at the time. so she's on the makeshift ladderthat was available in this particular clinic in sierra leone and then we would have localpeople work with us to try and help do the installations. and one of the things thatwe saw was that people were so excited about being involved in the installations and sovery often the person who was our driver would come with us and was very eager to be involvedin both doing the installation of solar panels
on the roof as well as putting the solar suitcaseon the walls. inside the clinics people from the local villageswould want to be involved in doing the installations and so i really think at that time we reallyhad what i would describe as an apprenticeship model. people that were very eager to be involvedwould get involved but we did not have a formalized training program. here's another example ofcarol in sierra leone and these were some local boys around the clinic that were outof work and were so eager to be involved. and so they tried to do everything possible.and carol is such a great teacher that she got each of them using tools and doing things.and when it was time to leave they were so disappointed. they said “can't you takeus with you? we really want to be doing this
all around our country.†so it really showedus what a strong interest there was in people getting training. well, as we moved from program to programwe found that our programs were getting larger and we needed to have some more formalizedprocesses in place to do trainings. this is a picture from liberia where we partneredwith world health organization and another small organization called liberia instituteof biomedical research to do 20 solar suitcase installations. and we realized that we wantedto have a more formalized training program. this training was primarily focused againon the end users but we wanted to provide a deeper grounding in solar electricity. sowe had a classroom training where we brought
some health technicians and all of the midwivesthat we'd be visiting in these 20 clinics together to do a training teaching about someof the basics of solar electricity. and as rim had been talking earlier aboutgames we also found games to be important. in this case you're seeing a slide of an energybudget game where we were trying to teach midwives that they had a fixed amount of energyto work with and to give them some sense of how much electricity was being used when theywere trying to do things like charge cell phones or use lights or use computers. andso each of these cards represented a different amount of wattage and we were trying to havethem work out different combinations of hours of usage of different items to show that thesame total amount of energy could be used
to supply different appliances for differentamounts of time. after we taught them in the classroom whenwe went to the clinics to do the installations we actually asked the midwives themselvesto be the teachers for the other people in their clinics. and i guess that was our veryfirst taste of a train the trainer program. they had learned with us for a day in theclassroom and then during the installation they were some of the teachers for their ownpeers. we had one main solar installer who worked with our team to do installations inthe clinics both putting the solar suitcase which i didn't mention becomes a permanentcabinet which gets fixed on the wall. so the entire system is otherwise prewired insidebut the rest of the system is quite plug and
play and actually in the room with me is halerinson who developed and designed the solar suitcase. and so if there's questions lateron that you would have about that technology he's available as well. and then also we had practice doing the installationson the roof. and at this time again it was more of an apprentice model for the installations.but as we started venturing to do larger and larger programs not just with 20 solar suitcasesbut sometimes with 50 or even 100 we developed a training program that was more geared towardsthe installers themselves and when we partnered with an agency we wanted to get some of theirstaff to become trained and also we wanted to train people that were permanently basedin the districts. so we trained district technicians,
sometimes these were coal chain techniciansand other times they were people that were local engineers that worked for the districtin multiple sectors, not just in healthcare. we also realized we were going to need a lotmore people to do the trainings and so we developed what's called the women solar ambassadorprogram. and if you can see in this picture carol weis is also here in the red in thefront. she was one of the lead teachers for this program and the idea behind this wasthat we needed people besides hal and myself to be doing the trainings around the worldand we knew that we were focused on women's healthcare and going into the health facilitiesboth the patients were women as well many of the health providers were women. and wefound that if we had women doing these trainings
it was a lot less intimidating. people werevery accepting of it. we also wanted women to be role models for other women in the samefor some of the same reasons that carol was talking about. so solar energy international worked withus to help find these women and we had many, many more applicants than we could accommodateand it turned out that the people who applied for this program were far more trained thanwe had anticipated. some of them were professional solar installers themselves. we had doctorsand geologists and engineers and electricians. and they represented five different countries.they did an online course with sei for about six weeks before coming and spending a weekwith us in berkley, california to do hands
on training. they learned to actually takeapart the systems and actually put together their own small solar electric system. theylearned in depth about the solar suitcase. and then we created makeshift structures inour back yard so they could practice things like tool safety, roof safety, how to do installationsof solar panels on low roofs and then higher roofs. and then we created things that lookeda little bit like some of the bare bones of a clinic so they could practice doing installationson the wall. we then took these women into the countries in which we were working todo classroom training. and here's an example from malawi where there's two solar ambassadorsthat are doing the teaching. what we've come to now typically is a two-dayclassroom training which includes some of
the basics about solar electricity, how tosite solar electric systems on roofs and then how to do a lot of practical exercises thatreinforce things like using tools. we try and get people to have their hands on as muchas possible as everybody realizes if you can have people interacting and using tools themselvesit's going to really reinforce learning a lot better than just sitting in a classroom.we do have books. we have posters. we have power points and we have videos that reinforcethe learning and as rim said it's really important to have the power points on some sort of athumb drive because the internet usually is very poor in these countries. we have found that most of the trainees havenot had a lot of experience with power tools
and so we try and reinforce how to use toolsin a safe way and even very basic things like using a ladder or something that we spendquite a bit of time on. i showed you a fairly makeshift ladder that carol had used in sierraleone in an earlier slide. we've actually found it's not that easy to get good laddersin country. and now when we're doing our installation programs we send tools including things likeretractable ladder that's of high quality because we feel this is one of the importantparts of having safe installations and it's not always easy to get a ladder in country. as we had larger solar electric systems oursystems move from being completely plug and play to ones that needed some wiring. so here'steaching people how to do wiring and junction
boxes. as our programs are getting largeronce again i think we're moving to use whips and to have more of a plug and play systemagain in the future. but in this type of picture you're seeing people who have already doneclassroom learning on how to do the wiring and junction boxes and now they're havingpractice on the ground doing it before going to the field. after we've done the classroom training wefollow this with many days of actual installations in clinics and we usually break the classinto teams. people are given checklists of what's important to do during an installationand every time we do the installation we review the checklist. and then once we finish theinstallations we use that as opportunities
for people to review skills. they do havea number of skills they need to complete for them to be certified for us as installers.but we also find that every time we go to health center we run into different typesof challenges and there's nothing that can really replace what it's like to have practicalexperience in the field and having people do problem solving on site and really tryand understand what the challenges are and really review what are some of the best practices. so here's another example of one of our solarambassadors doing a training. and one of the things that's been a challenge for us is howdo we get more women to be the actual field technicians. we always encourage our partnersto be bringing women in but many times a lot
of the existing technicians in the districtsare primarily men. and so it's not that easy to always get women to be the trainees asmuch as we're trying to promote this. another thing that's been very important inour trainings is actually providing teaching pedagogy so people know how to be good teachersto the health workers. and that's something that we don't see comes natural to all ofour technicians and so we really need to work with them about how to become a clear instructorand not just to focus on showing that they understand something but how do they get healthworkers to also be participatory, to be engaged, to be turning on switches so that after weleave the end users are going to be very comfortable using the technology.
here's an example from malawi where some ofour technicians are now engaging health workers. and often we get community members that arereally excited as well to learn about doing the installations. i just want to mentionas well you'll see a lot of bags on top of this table. that's because in addition tothe solar suit case being a user friendly solar electric system we actually includeall of the hardware that's needed to do the installation as part of each kit. so there'sthe hardware for mounting the panels on the roof. there's silicone gel to plug the holes.there's a screwdriver. there's all the screws that are needed. and that's – the reason we include thisis that we found over time that when we're
in very, very rural communities trying todo installations it's almost impossible to get the right screws and the devices thatwill really facilitate installation. so we learned the hard way that if we didn't bringthese ourselves it might be impossible to get high quality hardware for the installations.i'm going to actually invite hal to say a couple of words here. what i want to showyou is that in addition to just having these classroom trainings, we've now constructedsomething that isn't unlike the structures that in our back yard. they're mock roofsand this was a training – do you want to mention a couple of words, hal, from thisexperience in the philippines? hal erinson: sure. so in the philippines theyinvited all the technical trainers for the
national training institute to come to manilaand we gave them a couple of days on solar training on solar suitcase and trouble shooting.and then we also constructed these mock units that are both a roof and also a wall so thatthey could get hands on practice installing the systems. what we like to do is we liketo kind of give them the concept of how you do an installation. and then instead of doingit with them, we encourage them to take initiative, the students to take initiative. and we'llstand to the side and just kind of kibitz. we'll kind of offer some suggestions, givethem a few reminders but it's really great to have people self-organize in the trainingso that then we can reinforce that when we do the on the job portion of our trainings.
>> laura stachel: so just to give you a senseof where we've been doing trainings, most of these this map is showing all of the differentplaces where solar suitcases have been introduced but the countries in gold are really the onesthat have had the trainings and most of these have actually been led by our solar ambassadorsoften with one of our staff members as well. but the solar ambassadors have done a lotof the trainings in the countries that we've mentioned here. one of the things that we'llbe introducing this year is a regional training. we're going to be doing a training in ghanaand bringing in solar – or not solar technicians, just technicians and people from other partnerorganizations to ghana. we'll be creating structures like the ones you just saw thathal described in the philippines so that people
can get hands on experience during the classroomand practical training and then we'll be going into clinics to have hands on training inclinical sites as well. and we're hoping that that's going to equip the trainees to go backto their own countries and actually lead solar electric programs themselves. typically, now when we work with a partneragency it's a group like unicef, save the children, pathfinder, a group that's alreadyworking to strengthen healthcare but they don't have solar expertise. and so our rolehas been not to actually create new entrepreneurs but actually to be building capacity withinexisting organizations for them to be able to lead solar and to make our solar unitseasy enough that they'll be able to have a
really reliable and rugged system that willwork for years to come. when we first did our solar ambassador training we had expectedthat we'd be doing many more of these – >> stephanie bechler: laura, if i could just– if i could interrupt you for one brief second we're running a bit short on time.if you could find a good stopping point soon that would be great so we'll have time toget to some questions. >> laura stachel: all right. and this is actuallythe last slide. i was just going to say that the – >> stephanie bechler: perfect. >> laura stachel: solar ambassadors have actuallycontinued to work with us. we've now given
them an advanced training and they're continuingto do projects with us and they'll be doing that throughout the year. here is our websiteand thanks for the opportunity to share all of this information. >> stephanie bechler: thank you so much, laura.sorry to cut you off there. and now we'll go to our final presentation. rachel the floorif yours whenever you're ready. >> rachel mahmud: all right. thank you andthanks to all of the previous panelists for their great presentations. it's been reallyinformative and great to see all of the excellent work that you're doing to support women'senergy entrepreneurship. my name is rachel mahmud. i'm the gender associate at the globalalliance for clean cook stoves. and today
i'm going to give an overview of some of thealliance's gender capacity building tools and resources that we use to help enhancethe impact of clean cook stove and fuel enterprises. so just to give a quick overview of the alliancei can't – i'm not sure if this is blocking my screen so i'll try to move that out ofthe way. so the alliance is a global partnership, public private partnership that aims to createa thriving market for clean cook stoves and fuels. and our mission is to save lives, improvelivelihoods, empower women and protect the environment. and we aim to reach 100 millionhouseholds adopting clean and efficient cook stoves and fuels by 2020. and based on ourlatest reporting we are on track to achieve this goal and expect to exceed it by 2020.
and the reason why this is such a criticalissue is because as many of you know every day 3 billion people are cooking on dirtyand inefficient traditional cook stoves which traditionally looks like a three stone fireburning wood on an open fire. so they're exposed to many of the health an environmental impactsthat result in about 4.3 million deaths on an annual basis. and then there are a numberof climate and forestry and other environmental degradations that occur due to the cuttingof wood fuel for burning and as well as the number of social and physical impacts on womenand girls who suffer from the drudgerous experience of carrying heavy loads of firewood as wellas putting them at risk for attack when they go out to select that work for hours at atime over the course of a week. we've also
found that clean cooking contributes to asignificant portion of global black carbon emission so there's a lot of potential byintroducing some of these new and cleaner burning and more efficient burning technologiesat the household level. so the alliance has a specific gender strategybecause women and girls are at the forefront of the issue that we're trying to address.we're looking at how to increase the role of women as entrepreneurs and address differentgender issues within the value chain to help scale adoption. so clearly women are the mainusers of these products and therefore they're going to ultimately determine how they areused and whether or not they're adopted. women entrepreneurs are also potentially untappedresource that could really help scale the
sector and create a much more sustainablemarket. so we're looking at women, who are the fastest growing cohort of entrepreneursin developing countries. they have been found to reinvest 90 percent of their incomes backinto the communities which is a much higher percentage compared to men. they have a veryhigh rate of payback on loans and they're able to better reach female consumers whoare often in isolated areas which ultimately can help increase sales. and so we've identified a number of challengesthat need to be addressed in order to scale women's empowerment through the sector. ofcourse beginning with the capacity of the enterprises and ngos on the ground who areimplementing different clean cook stove and
fuel initiatives. they need to better understandhow to mainstream gender and women's empowerment into their business models. there's a needfor financing in the sector to look at how women can be integrated into the value chainas well as how projects can better impact women users. there's a current gap in theevidence of understanding what exactly are the gender impacts of the sector and thenthere's the high level policy need to set and influence national level as well as internationalat the united nations level policy to increase awareness and advocate for these policies. so the alliance has about five pillars toits gender strategy. the first is to help build the evidence and share data. so we'vecommissioned resource – i'm sorry. we've
commissioned research on some of the mosteffective approaches for working with women in the value chain and we've also developednew methodologies to measure the socioeconomic impacts of clean cooking solutions. we alsohave a component of capacity building with enterprises and ngos so we have developeda resource guide for scaling women's energy entrepreneurship in this sector which looksat the role of women at each level of the value chain and how you can best engage thembased on universal best practices. we've also developed an online knowledge hubwhere each of these resources for each segment of the value chain can be tapped into. wealso conduct gender due diligence with our grantees and look at what is the baselinefor their gender interventions in the business
model and how can we help them improve that.and additionally we have an empowerment training that we've designed with researchers and testedin the field to look at how we can strengthen the empowerment and leadership skills of womenmicro entrepreneurs. along the access to finance pillar we havethe women's empowerment fund which is an annual grant fund that commissions about five grantsof about $75,000.00 each to different women led enterprises as well as enterprises lookingto further strengthen women's role in their business model. and we also provide connectionsbetween enterprises and investors who are interested in measuring and investing in thegender impacts of clean cooking businesses. and then finally we have two other componentsthat include awareness raising and influencing
policies. and so that includes mainstreaminggender throughout our national awareness campaigns which are currently being piloted in ghana,uganda, bangladesh and india and then also looking at how to integrate energy accessinto school curricula and extracurricular activities for boys and girls so that theycan actually serve as the next generation of change agents within their communitiesfor adopting the improved technologies. and then finally we're working at the internationalpolicy level to integrate energy access across the global gender community as well as workingwith the energy sector to help build their capacity to better integrate gender into theirprograms. so the alliance has developed the empowered entrepreneur training handbook whichis one of the tools that i referenced. it
was developed as part of our strategy to scaleeffective approaches for increasing goal and the value training and to increase the socialand economic benefit of clean cook stoves and fuels for women and girls. the handbookprovides six days of business skills, empowerment and leadership training mostly targeted forwomen micro entrepreneurs, small size enterprises and sales agents who work throughout the householdenergy sector. and the empowerment component of the trainingtakes a transformative agency based approach which enhances individual's capacity to createand focus in on their goals. and then the leadership component helps individuals realizethose goals with a set of tangible tools to execute them. it's designed to be adaptableto any context using a human centered approach
and it allows trainers to design and implementthe training curriculum independently. the handbook you might find is different fromsome of the other trainings you've seen on women's empowerment not only because it includesspecific empowerment and leadership training modules but also because it looks at businessskills from a gendered perspective and addresses the different challenges that men and womenface in running a successful business. we find that the empowerment and leadershipcomponents of the training are particularly significant for women entrepreneurs becausewomen frequently lack access to formal education and training. and so this training tries toaddress that gap by offering a curriculum that's accessible to any player in the sectorand addresses the constraints and gaps that
women consistently face in business. we'veactually commissioned some research with john hopkins university and some of our partners,implementing partners on the ground to test the impact of the training. and in kenya theresearch found that women sales agents received empowerment and leadership training sold threetimes as many stoves as men who received the same agency based training. and additionallywe found that users who purchased a cook stove from women reported greater customer satisfaction.they're more likely to use it predominantly, consistently and as well as promote the stoveto others. so over the past year and a half the handbookhas been tested in at least ten countries in sub-saharan africa, south asia and latinamerica and we have mostly used a training
of trainers format which was designed to buildthe capacity of enterprise and ngo level trainers to then work directly with women micro entrepreneurs.and actually over the last six months or so [inaudible] international has taken on thiscurriculum in its cook stove program which is funded by usaid and they have hosted tworegional training of trainers for partners in east africa and south asia. and overallwith all of the trainings combined that have been conducted so far nearly 500 women entrepreneurshave been supported through this handbook training. and following the tot, the partner's organizationswill then typically facilitate their own trainings of women entrepreneurs in their sales networkand the workshops give each organization an
opportunity to develop a concrete plan ofaction for implementing the guidelines in the handbook. another partner of ours, energiawhich is the international network on gender and sustainable energy has also participatedby sending its women's economic empowerment program grantees to attend these regionaltots. and then the alliance's own women's empowerment fund grantees who are operatingin uganda and india have also attended the regional tots which will prepare them to testthe handbook within their own business models. and we also have each of our grantees underthe women's empowerment fund incorporating elements of the handbook into their trainingprograms. we encourage all of our partners to make useof the resource and it's something that's
publicly available on our website and we believethat it will enhance existing training programs and help fill key gaps in women's economicempowerment. the authors of the handbook who have been, also been supported by [inaudible]and usaid have also designed a set of tools for measuring the impact of the training onwomen's economic empowerment and leadership and these tools were developed in line withthe alliance's broader social impact mne framework which is a global measurement system thatwe developed in collaboration with icrw which is the international center for research onwomen to better understand the socioeconomic impacts of clean cooking programs. so we've worked with icrw as well as external,an external steering committee to provide
guidance on the social impact tools and methodologies.and we have on our website a theory of change, a set of indicators and tools and there willsoon be a guidance note on how entrepreneurs and ngos can use this framework within theirown business models. and i'll be sharing a link to that mne framework at the end of mypresentation. so the next piece that i want to touch on. >> stephanie bechler: rachel. >> rachel mahmud: yes. >> stephanie bechler: sorry to interrupt rightnow but we're running a little bit short on time. if you could find a good stopping pointas soon as we can get to some of these questions
that are coming in. >> rachel mahmud: absolutely. so i'll go aheadand wrap it up here but what i have highlighted on this slide is the key components of thealliance's gender capacity building process. and so instead of going through this slidei'll let participants if they have access to the power point at the end of the presentationthey can access this and then they can go to our website and learn more about the exactprocess that we follow when we provide gender capacity building services to our granteeswhich is the first link listed and then the remaining links listed and the empowermenthandbook. we have an hr and operations training as well as the resource guide for scalingadoption and our social impact mne framework.
so thank you very much for your time. >> stephanie bechler: thank you so much forthat rachel and thank you to all of our panelists for the really excellent presentations. i'mgoing to dive right into questions here. this first one is for rim. and we have someoneasking how much does it cost for each training and are the materials used open source? >> rim razzouk: so the trainings usually wedo them through our partners and we send them the solar tool kits and everything. so i cannotreally give a specific number per person but we have some sources on our website as wellas on [inaudible].su.edu. for the mtts we have separate orders if people also like toorder specific ones for their organizations.
and they can actually contact me and we canactually provide them with a form to complete or with a quote for specific entities or ifthey want to do their own trainings we can also work on something around that. >> stephanie bechler: great. thank you somuch. and do you hold the train the trainers or tot training? >> rim razzouk: we do. we've been doing thatthrough our partners as well. so as i said in every country we have a partner institutionthat we deal with and we give them the curriculum and we go there and do our trainings. butdefinitely like if they contact us we can also discuss and we can work something outfor them. if the number of the audience is,
the number of trainees is actually a goodnumber. we don't provide one on one definitely but – >> stephanie bechler: thank you. and thenthis question is for laura. is there a place that people can go to find countries thatyou're still active in? we've received questions inquiring about ghana, liberia, and is therea way for them to find out countries that you're still working with? >> laura stachel: can you hear me? i thinkthat – >> stephanie bechler: yes. laura stachel: probably the best thing todo would be to contact us. you could either
write to me laura@wecaresolar.org or info@wecaresolar.org.and i think that would probably be the best way to get the most up to date informationfor 2016. >> stephanie bechler: great. thank you somuch. and we'll have the presentations will all be posted online. some of our attendeeshave been asking. we'll have the pdfs available so you can get most of the contact informationthere. this question is for laura and carol whoever would like to answer. what is thecriteria used for selecting countries where trainings are held? noting that there's astrong west and east african focus. >> laura stachel: so for our organizationfor we care solar we actually have a very strong focus as well in east africa. we'redoing a lot of work in tanzania, malawi, uganda
in addition to the work that we're doing inwest africa. but for us we look at countries where there's energy poverty as well as highrates of maternal and newborn mortality. so we're looking strategically at where our solarelectric systems can have the most impact on improving health outcomes and then we haveto look for places where we can have good partnerships both with the government, thelocal districts and as well to have an implementation partner because we don't have full time staffin countries. so we always need to work for, look for a partner agency that can be an importantresource for us and for our programs. >> carol weis: yes. for asu i think that rimwould be more qualified to answer that question. i am just the trainer for the organizationbut i don't do the organizational part.
>> rim razzouk: so we'll actually have the– it depends also on the grant. so for example now we are also, voctec is also in the caribbeanbecause of a different grant and we are also in west africa and asia and pacific islandsand different locations. and also it's a where there is energy resources and lack of theuse of and the knowledge of how about how to use those energy resources and poverty.so mainly in the places where we can actually enhance the quality of the people's livesand train them and educate them about using those clean energy resources and benefit fromthem in their countries. so so far we've been in asia, pacific islands, caribbean, westafrica, east africa as well. so mainly the similar reasons as we care.
>> stephanie bechler: thank you, rim. anddo the trainings offered by voctec follow national certification schemes and anotherportion to that question is for countries that don't have established certificationor licensing systems how do you go about promoting the training? >> rim razzouk: so so far we've been doingcertification for west africa and mainly our curriculum follows the somehow the napsafcertification even in the countries that they don't actually use napsaf certification. butwe try to always adhere to the regulations of that in our curriculum. so we've been doingalso some of the napsaf certification trainings with in different counties as well. but inwest africa we've been doing it for their
– we've been customizing the curriculumfor the regional certification. but other than that we don't really have a specificcertification process for now. >> stephanie bechler: great. thank you. andthis is a question for rachel. you had mentioned the clean cook stoves obviously but do youhave any information on solar furnaces? >> rachel mahmud: i do not. we're workingwith the household cook stove and fuel products so that's a little bit out of our main focusarea. >> stephanie bechler: fair enough. >> rachel mahmud: if someone would – sorry.if someone would like me to connect them with a fuel expert, i could do that.
>> stephanie bechler: great. and again thosecontact informations will be available on the presentations online. this question isfor laura. what is an acceptable number of participants per solar training or does itdepend on the focus of each training? >> carol weis: actually one of the thingswe realized is that we don't want to have the trainings to be too large because we wantto have each person to have practical experience. i'd say our largest training was 23 peopleand that seemed to be a bit large. we try and keep it to be closer to between 15 and20 and then we break up into groups that are typically maybe seven or eight people in sizewhen we go and do the installations in facilities. and we always need to have at least one ifnot two people for that group of seven and
eight as mentors. >> stephanie bechler: excellent. and is thesolar suitcase available for purchase? >> carol weis: we really try and work withinstitutions to try and provide humanitarian support for health centers. we have anotherversion that's for schools and for orphanages. so it is available from institutions to purchase.it isn't available as a consumer product for individuals. >> stephanie bechler: ok. and how are thesesolar kits or other items financed within that? is it end user purchased or do you guysever work with a grant subsidies? >> carol weis: were you speaking to me? ikind of missed that one.
>> stephanie bechler: yes. sorry. >> carol weis: so we're a nonprofit organizationand we are primarily funded through foundations, through individuals as granters. the healthfacilities themselves do not have to purchase the solar suitcase but they do need to showa commitment towards maintenance by setting aside a fund for things like battery replacementor for servicing later on. we often will work with the district health organizations totry and set aside funds if a clinic doesn't have any funds of their own. but there's usuallya third party that's paying for the capital costs of the solar suitcase itself. >> stephanie bechler: excellent. thank youso much. and that is all the time we're going
to have for questions. there's about threethat we didn't get to that we'll have the panelists after this webinar is over. butthank you so much for everyone's time and these wonderful presentations. before we signoff we'd like to ask the audience to take a brief survey. it's five short questionsthat you'll need to answer. it's really important that we get feedback so we can understandwho we're doing. and the first question is going to be displayed on the screen in justa minute. did you find the webinar content provided you with useful and insight, informationand insight? and please select on screen if you strongly agree, agree, not sure, disagreeor strongly disagree. great. thank you so much.
our next question, the webinar presenterswere effective. thank you very much. our next question, overall the webinar met my expectations.thank you. our fourth question today, do you anticipate using the information presentedin this webinar directly in your work and/or organization? great. thank you so much. andour final question today. do you anticipate applying the information presented to developor revise policies or programs in your country of focus? yes, no or not applicable? great.and that is the end of our survey. thank you so much for participating. on behalfof the clean energy solution center i'd like to extend a thank you to our terrific expertpanelists and the attendees for participating in today's webinar. we've had a great audienceand we really appreciate your time. i invite
our attendees to check the solution centerwebsite if you would like to view the slides and listen to a recording of today's presentationas well as previously held webinars. additionally, you will find information onupcoming webinars and other training events. we are now posting webinar recordings to theclean energy solution center youtube channel and please allow about one week for that tobe posted. we invite you to inform your colleagues and those in your networks about the solutioncenter resources and services including the no cost policy assistance. now we invite everyoneto have a great rest of your day and we hope to see you again at future clean energy solutioncenter events. this concludes our webinar.
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