Sipra Roy, one of the technicians, appreciates the work. She earns a piece wage amounting to anywhere between 100 and 120 Euros per month. Another employee, Ambia, tells us her story. Previously, she had been beaten by her husband before moving back home to her parents and applying for the introductory course. Not only did she qualify for a job at the technology center – she passed with the highest score. Now she walks six miles to and from work every day, but her income makes it possible to support herself and help out her parents. Her husband courted her several times and begged her to come back. Eventually she gave in. The couple has found a new kind of balance in their relationship, and the two now live with Sipra’s parents. Her life has begun anew thanks to her job, and at home she is the proud owner of a solar home system of Grameen’s largest model, which generates up to 130 Watts.

Saima has started her own business in a shed adjacent to her brother’s house, where she mounts and delivers circuit board components as subcontractor to the technology center. A neighbor had told her about the introductory course, so she applied. She also claims to earn more respect because of her new job. Saima was married at the age of 16 and moved in with her husband’s parents. When her husband began to abuse her and demand more dowry, she left him and moved into her brother’s house. Now she is thinking about hiring a new employee, signing more subcontracts and eventually running her own electronic assembly factory on a larger scale.

Grameen Shakti now has expanded its network across the country, with more than 700 local branch offices and 5 000 employees, most of them women. Today, their efforts have reached 2.5 million people in more than 40,000 villages. In June 2009, 13 years after the founding of the company, more than 250,000 solar home systems have been installed, and the numbers are surging at a rate of 10,000 installations every month. Not to mention more than 40,000 improved cooking stoves and 7,000 home biogas facilities. The ambition is to install one million solar home systems by 2011.

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Den här artikeln kommer ur Sveriges Naturs artikelarkiv för artiklar som publicerats i den tryckta utgåvan av Sveriges Natur mellan 1998 och 2017.