Fifty-one-year-old Carolina Nyagawa and her husband, Romanus Kalinga, have a good life as farmers in southern Tanzania near Iringa. In the past, they got by, but it wasn’t easy to save for any extras or make needed improvements to their farm. Carolina learned about how Solar Sister worked through her neighbor and decided to sign up for the training.
Now, as a Solar Sister Entrepreneur since 2015, Carolina and her husband have increased their livestock and fulfilled a dream of building a modern home on their land. Carolina is saving to send her daughter Jackline to university. She’d like to increase the dairy cows for the farm, and she has her eye on a new sofa for their home. They regularly buy shares in the local savings group and put aside income for the future.
Beyond benefits for the family, Carolina is well-pleased about her work as an entrepreneur providing solar lamps to her community.
“I feel proud when I see people in my village have stopped using candles. Nowadays, they buy a lot of solar lights from me, so the health and safety effects are improved.”
Caroline enjoys the independence that earning her own income brings. Carolina sites the Solar Sister training in networking and building relationships as a critical component to her success as an entrepreneur. She also likes using the marketing materials like the posters she puts up on market days.
“It is easy to be self-employed and improve my family life with the business training from Solar Sister.”
*Last Mile Learning: Solar Sister’s experience has taught us that women tend to be more comfortable taking advantage of opportunities that do not come from strangers, but from people they know and trust. Data shows this approach is more successful than the standard approach of assembling and pitching to large groups and/or through community events. We found that entrepreneurs recruited through friends sell four times as much as entrepreneurs recruited through community events and produced the highest number of recruits.
Thank you to Energia for their support to produce our ‘Impact Stories’ about the journey and work of Solar Sister Entrepreneurs.