Underscoring the importance of the impact of access to energy, or the lack thereof, on women and girls, the first two years of the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) are dedicated to a global campaign on energy, women, children and health.

In line with its commitment to SE4All, ENERGIA launched a new 1,3 million Euro programme—the Gender and Energy Advocacy Programme—which will give hand and feet to the SE4All campaign at the national level in five countries: Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Senegal and Tanzania. The aim is to contribute to efforts that ensure that governments and donors allocate investments to energy programmes that are gender informed, through three intervention areas:

1. To integrate gender objectives and actions in SE4All Country Action Agendas and investment prospectus in the five focus countries.
2. To operationalise five national campaigns on women’s economic empowerment through energy access, reaching out to 14 million people.
3. To showcase the results of the ENERGIA’s Women’s Economic Empowerment programme in SE4All regional and global outreach

The campaigns and advocacy efforts are designed and being implemented by ENERGIA’s partners in the countries working closely with SE4ALL contact points with national governments. Kopernik in Indonesia; Practical Action East Africa, partnering with Sustainable Community Development Services (SCODE) in Kenya; the Centre for Rural Technology in Nepal, partnering with the National Association of Community Electricity Users Nepal and the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists;  GVEP and SEM Fund in Senegal and Solar Sisters, partnering with Ripple Effect Images and Show the Good in Tanzania.

The programme is supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the Dutch Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) and the Humanist Institute for Co-operation with Developing Countries (Hivos). It will run from 2015 – 2017 and will include general awareness raising activities, lobby and media related activities; all to put women in the spotlight and show that women, when empowered, are part of the solution. The program is complementary to ENERGIA’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme, which supports women-led micro- and small businesses delivering energy products and services to over 2,000,000 consumers by 2017.