Picture: Susana, a local entrepreneur and owner of a Centro Luz en Casa, has her new system connected to a refrigerator.

The Luz en Casa Ngäbe-Buglé rural electrification programme benefits households and small stores with access to basic electricity service. Susana, a local entrepreneur in the Quebrada Arena community of Umani, has benefited from Luz en Casa since 2021. She has a store located in a reference and accessible place for many of its neighbors, who are also beneficiaries of the acciona.org programme.

The solar home system installed allows to illuminate her store and connect small devices such as phones, radios or tablets. This increased his economic activity by allowing her to open her store more hours a day. Now, she does not have to close when night comes.

The small store of Susana was identified to host a Centro Luz en Casa, months after starting to benefit from Luz en Casa. The purpose of the center is to offer users service and guarantee the sustainability of the service offered. With this aim, Susana was trained to provide attention to the beneficiaries and to offer maintenance and technical support to their solar home systems.

At the end of 2022, with the arrival of new models of solar home systems at Luz en Casa Ngäbe-Buglé, she decided to replace her system with a higher-features one. Now, she can connect small devices as well as big appliances. This change allows Susana to have a refrigerator in her store that has allowed her to increase her sales also to cold drinks.

This is the story of Susana who, like the more than 16,500 people benefited in the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous region, has improved her quality of life, work and social life. acciona.org began its activity in Panama in 2017 to offer access to sustainable, reliable and affordable basic electricity service to people with no expectations of receiving it through conventional means but with the same rights to access this service to improve their human, social and environmental development.