Growing from 10 to 3,000 entrepreneurs, Solar Sister has learned many lessons about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to recruitment of women in clean energy value chains. Identifying women who will thrive in our unique business opportunity is critical to scaling Solar Sister’s last mile distribution. Over the past eight years, Solar Sister has piloted and tested a variety of different strategies and one main component has held true over and over again: social networks are powerful.

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When Aisha Mgaya, a young woman working as a secretary in a small town in southern Tanzania, heard about the clean energy business opportunity offered by Solar Sister, she knew she had to get her mother involved. Her mother, Isabella Mgaya, 49, is a farmer in Maduma village, an hour’s drive from town, who lives with her two sons Vespa and Reagan.

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