> WHOLE VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

SELF’s Whole Village Development Model takes an integrated approach to community empowerment using a mix of solar energy solutions to improve the lives of people who don’t have access to electricity. By working closely with communities and adhering to our operating principles of SELF Determination, SELF Help and SELF Reliance, we seek to provide benefits in:

Education: powering lights, computers and wireless internet services.
Health: powering facility lights, labs, diagnostic equipment and vaccine refrigerators.
Water & Agriculture: powering water wells and pumps for clean drinking water and year-round crop irrigation.
Enterprise: powering centers for small businesses and providing electricity for machinery and equipment.
Community: electrifying homes, community centers and street lighting.

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> PROJECT UPDATES

  • Colombia Man w Panel

    Colombia

    UPDATE: We’re now field testing three recently installed solar powered direct-drive vaccine refrigerators and the first commercially available direct-drive, battery-free vaccine icepack freezer to support immunization efforts at two remote village health posts in the mountains of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta [...]

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  • Haiti SMG Corporant

    Haiti

    UPDATE: Haiti’s very first Solar Market Garden™ is a success! The system we designed and installed is located in Corporant and managed by Zanmi Agrikol, a sister organization of Partners In Health. For the last three months it’s been successfully growing okra, tomatoes, eggplant, and cabbage. The ability for such high-value vegetables to be grown [...]

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  • SELF in Benin

    Benin

    UPDATE: The first four of eight Solar Market Gardens™ are up and running in Dunkassa and Bessassi, and we expect the other four to be operational in the next several weeks. The two schools and health center are complete, too, and we will also be powering a micro-enterprise center, street lights and a drinking water [...]

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ENERGY IS A HUMAN RIGHT

Benin Kids

Access to energy is foundational to achieving a broad range of basic human rights and all of the Millennium Development Goals. SELF’s ENERGY IS A HUMAN RIGHT™ campaign provides a voice to the 1.5 billion people around the world living without access to modern energy services and calls upon everyone to join the campaign to [...]

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SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOR ALL

Lesotho

In early 2012, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon formally launched the U.N.’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All Initiative whose goals are to: ensure universal access to modern energy services for the world’s poor; double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy [...]

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PERSONAL STORIES

Madame Portrait

Madame Ganigui Guera is the president of the Women’s Farming Collective in the village of Dunkassa, one of two villages in the Kalalé district in northern Benin where SELF designed and installed three of its Solar Market Gardens™ (SMGs). The innovative solar-powered drip irrigation systems have been operating for five years to help overcome the [...]

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> SELF’s Mission

With the power of the sun and your help, we can eliminate energy poverty. Thank you for your support!

> Annual Report

> Annual Report

2011 SELF Annual Report

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