Fenix is proud to share this press release in support of energy access in emerging markets. 

Washington D.C. – Twenty of the world’s leading off-grid clean energy entrepreneurs sent a letter today to World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick requesting $500 million in financial commitments to help them deliver on the world’s energy access goals. The group’s letter is backed by a letter of support from the CEOs of more than 25 leading civil society organizations from around the world, which calls for these commitments to take the form of a pledge at the upcoming Rio+20 earth summit.

Congrats to our friends over at Grameen who are featured in this article by Deobrah Bassett for Huffington Post! Fenix is excited to be supplying Grameen CKWs with ReadySet kits to charge smartphones. [Link to Grameen Blog Post]

In Uganda, smartphones are being used to help farmers get access to more agricultural information, through conversation with one another and applications on the phones. The Grameen Foundation's Application Laboratory (aka AppLab) created an app for its Community Knowledge Workers (CKW), called CKW search. It's an application that informs farmers about crop failure, pests, weather and more. This helps farmers to take precautions and also determines where to invest their money. 

It has been three months since the devastating earthquakes and tsunami hit Japan. Many Japanese companies, including Toyota Motor Corp, have recovered since the earthquake. However, some towns are recovering at a slower pace due to delays in allocation for money by centralized government.

Fenix and our partners believe that very careful consideration must be taken when accepting donations and providing humanitarian aid.

Please see below for more information about our efforts and we welcome your feedback.

It's hard to imagine what life might be like after such a powerful earthquake and tsunami. We've compiled a short list of articles and excerpts to try and help us better understand the what is happening half a world away. 

Dear All,

My heart goes out to those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. My team at Fenix and I are deeply moved by the compassion and heroic efforts of the citizens of Japan, the thousands of the relief workers, and the millions of individual donors contributing from around the world. On behalf of Fenix International, I would like to make a humble contribution to the global relief efforts by supplying ReadySet Solar kits to relief agencies serving on the ground in Japan.

This NPR article presents an overview of the stoves program at Aprovecho in Oregon, and mentions the enormous scale required: a need for 500-600 million cookstoves is estimated. Fenix similarly is working hard to scale its energy solutions for the 1.5 billion without electricity.

Melinda Gates explains what non-profits can learn from Coca-Cola