ACCIONA Microenergia trains micro entrepreneurs in the rural areas of Cajamarca

“We have realized we had some capacities that we did not know; now we think as entrepreneurs”. These were the moving words said by Arsemio Padilla, attendee to the Entrepreneurial Training Workshop that ACCIONA Microenergia Peru has developed, in association with the so-called FICAID (Spanish acronym for the ICAI Engineers for Development Foundation), in the middle of July.

The users of ACCIONA Microenergia Peru’s isolated photovoltaic systems have electric lighting in their houses, but finding compatible, quality, low-consumption and affordable electric devices in their communities is not easy. Thus, by the end of 2015, 10 Centros Luz en Casa will be opened. With this aim, entrepreneurs, who are ACCIONA Microenergia Peru’s clients, have been trained to start small businesses to sell 12V devices that are compatible with the systems, and will offer maintenance services for those systems, under a micro franchise model.

These entrepreneurs have taken 4 training workshops: Installation and Order Attention; Management Processes; Communications System and Entrepreneurial Training. These workshops have been specially developed by the ACCIONA Microenergia Foundation, FICAID and the Innovation and Technology for Development Centre of the Technical University of Madrid, the three entities that carry out the project “Rural Electrification with Supply and Service Centres”.

This project, which is co funded by the Spanish Cooperation, complements the “Luz en Casa” programme (Light at Home) that ACCIONA Microenergia Peru implements and that, up to now, has almost 4,000 users of the Peruvian Department of Cajamarca who have access to electric energy in their houses by means of isolated photovoltaic systems.

The opening of the first Centros Luz en Casa is planned for August 2015. One of these centres will be the demonstrative Centro Luz en Casa that will be sited in the ACCIONA Microenergia Peru office.