Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

LivelyHoods is a dynamic sales network of youth and women who better the lives of low-income households in slum communities by distributing life-improving clean energy products in hard-to-reach markets. Our products include clean-burning cookstoves, clean fuels, and solar products. Our unique consignment and training model empowers vulnerable, unemployed and under-experienced individuals to become clean energy entrepreneurs. Our unique value proposition to trainees is a low-risk, high potential training and income generation opportunity. For the low-income households that we serve, we offer financing, personalised after-sales support, and behaviour change communications about clean energy products.

Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

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Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

LivelyHoods creates jobs for the most disadvantaged youth and women in slum communities and tackles major health and environmental issues for the base of the pyramid families by creating access to clean-energy products in hard-to-reach communities. We differentiate ourselves as a no-risk entrepreneurship opportunity, providing a basket of products on consignment, and training workshops absolutely free of charge. In this way, youth and women have access to risk-free starter capital and are never left worse off than they were before. Our model of training youth and women allows them to: 1) build their financial capital by earning an income; 2) increase their human capital by learning new skills and experience in the clean-energy sector; and 3) expand their social capital as they share information and create relationships in their communities. 

LivelyHoods is committed to overcoming the barriers that youth and women face in getting and maintaining sustainable employment. We have specific targets and KPIs to track our performance with the majority of our sales agents being women (63%). LivelyHoods provides two weeks of comprehensive classroom training in one of our 13 community-based branches, covering a range of employable skills, including sales, marketing, customer service and professionalism. This is followed by an average of six months of on-the-job training with instructors and experienced sales agents. After agents begin working with LivelyHoods, they participate in daily one-hour training sessions where they engage in role playing, motivational, and team-building activities, as well as continued sales training and confidence-building exercises. As one agent said, Now if I want a job elsewhere, I‚ ll have something to present. We have trained over 4,800 youth and women since our inception, with over 70% going on to find employment, start their own businesses, or pursue further education. 

At the same time, we are bringing low-income families to the forefront of the clean energy revolution by reaching out to them directly with product information and financing. Our consumer financing mechanism also provides the opportunity for more women to purchase clean energy products, as they can use the small daily household budget to pay for their product in installments. Typically, it is women that purchase our clean cookstoves (70%). The products will pay for themselves in 3-6 months, saving 50% of the money they previously spent on fuel, and women are almost three times more likely than men to invest income back into the family. The greatest proportion of LivelyHoods customers use the money saved to cover basic expenses such as food, water, and household needs, proving how vital these savings can be for the average household.

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