SEWA to provide solar lanterns and energy-efficient stoves to its members

• International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, is helping India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) provide energy-efficient cook stoves and solar lanterns to more than 200,000 of its members in Rajasthan and Gujarat over the next three years.
  
  
• IFC will guarantee a loan from local banks to SEWA members by signing a memorandum of understanding with SEWA. The project is subject to regulatory approvals. It is in line with IFC’s clean-growth strategy and will also help to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. It will also serve to demonstrate a self-sustaining business model that could also be introduced in other parts of Asia and in Africa.
  
  
• “This is one of the world’s largest clean-energy projects aimed at the $5 trillion market of consumers, distributors, and entrepreneurs that forms the base of the economic pyramid,”