-In our experiecne at BCI accountability is foremost maintained by self-ownership of solutions. Training women who live at the nexus of family, social, economic and political life in their households as Solar Engineers ensures that the foremost practitioners of BCI’s solution have a vested interested in providing genuinely effective, balanced quality of life improvements that serve both themselves and all those around them. This focus echoes the emphasis on vertical integration that is built into BCI’s solutions through the level of agency that communities are given over their development; extensive communication is a matter of course in this system, and the fundamental prioritization of grassroots voices and needs has shown a hugely positive effect in ensuring that those grassroots voices are responsible and accountable for their success and solution management on the ground.
-Empowering women and their communities through practical, hands-on learning gives communities a sense of pride and genuine ownership for their energy, education and economic growth, and we have found this to be the most clear indicator of solution success over the long-term. This is emphasized by the scalability and peer-learning built in features that all of BCI’s programs incorporate; women and their communities are able to not only change their own lives for the better, but share these improvements with all those around them and take credit for them as well as reaping the massive quality of life benefits that solution implementation results in.
-In terms of specific platforms for furthering this type of vertical integration, BCI tends to keep things very simple, such as through ensuring regular communication after training between trainers and beneficiaries, and groups of Solar Engineers, via Whatsapp and easy to use, low-energy comms apps in a similar vein.