The Hidden Cost of No Power Is Carried by Women GivePower's clean energy projects are lifting that burden — and unlocking opportunity for entire communities.

The Hidden Cost of No Power Is Carried by Women

GivePower's Clean Energy Projects Are Lifting That Burden — and Unlocking Opportunity for Entire Communities

When the power goes out in California, it's an inconvenience. The refrigerator warms up. The router goes dark. You light a candle and wait for the grid to come back. When the power goes out — or has never existed — in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, rural Haiti, or remote regions of Kenya, it's something else entirely. It's hours lost every day. It's physical labor. It's a ceiling on what's possible and in community after community, the people who carry that burden most heavily are women. This is not a sentimental observation. It's a documented reality — and it's one of the reasons My Home & Solar Solutions is proud to partner with GivePower, a nonprofit building solar-powered clean energy and clean water infrastructure in communities where the grid has never reached.

The Real Cost of No Power

In communities without reliable electricity, the tasks that powered homes take for granted — refrigerating food, charging devices, running water pumps, lighting workspaces at night — become full-time jobs. Water collection alone illustrates the point. In parts of rural Africa, families walk an average of 3.7 miles per day to collect water. The work falls disproportionately on women and girls. A woman who spends four to six hours a day collecting water cannot spend those hours farming, studying, running a business, or caring for young children in a meaningful way. The same pattern applies to energy-dependent tasks: grinding grain by hand instead of with an electric mill, hand-washing clothes, studying by kerosene lamp with its toxic fumes and fire risk, giving birth in a clinic with no lights.
The absence of electricity doesn't just create inconvenience. It creates a structural ceiling on education, economic participation, and physical health — and it lands hardest on women.

What GivePower Is Doing About It

GivePower is a nonprofit founded on the conviction that clean energy is a human right, not a luxury. The organization deploys solar microgrids and solar-powered water systems in communities across Africa, Asia, and the Americas — places where the traditional utility grid is either absent or completely unreliable.

GivePower's projects include:

Solar Water Farms: GivePower's solar-powered desalination systems can convert saltwater or contaminated water into clean drinking water at a rate of up to 19,000 gallons per day. In coastal and arid communities, these systems eliminate the need for water collection entirely — and return hours of productive time to the families who had been spending them on foot.

Solar Microgrids for Schools and Clinics: GivePower electrifies health clinics so that deliveries can happen safely at night, vaccines can be refrigerated, and diagnostic equipment can function. Solar-powered schools give children — including girls who might otherwise be pulled from their studies — the ability to learn after dark and access digital tools for the first time.

Community Energy Hubs: In some deployments, GivePower creates community hubs where residents can charge devices, access the internet, and use powered equipment — the kind of access that, in a generation, can produce a small business owner, a nurse, a teacher.

The connection between electrification and gender equity is not metaphorical. It's measurable. Studies across multiple countries have shown that access to electricity correlates with higher rates of girls' school enrollment, lower rates of maternal mortality, higher household income, and broader participation of women in local economies.

Why California Homeowners Are Part of This Story

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with your electric bill in Ventura County.

The answer is: more than you might think.

My Home & Solar Solutions is built around the belief that clean, affordable energy matters — here and everywhere. When we help a California homeowner reduce their electric bill through solar and battery storage, a portion of that mission connects to something larger: demonstrating that clean energy works, that it's accessible, and that it creates value for families at every income level and in every corner of the world.
Our partnership with GivePower reflects that belief. The same solar technology that powers your home during a blackout in Thousand Oaks is powering a clinic that can now deliver babies safely in rural Kenya. The same battery systems that protect your household during a wildfire shutoff are, in different configurations, keeping vaccines cold in regions that have never had consistent refrigeration.
Clean energy is not a California story. It's a human story. And the homeowners who choose to go solar are participating in that story — whether they know it or not.

The Burden That Lifts When the Lights Come On

GivePower's field reports consistently document the same thing: when a solar system goes online in a community that previously had no power, one of the first changes people notice is time.
Time to study. Time to work. Time to rest. Time to build something.
In communities where women have been carrying the energy burden — collecting water, grinding grain, working around the absence of electricity — that time is profoundly transformative. Girls who were walking for water are now in school. Women who were hand-washing in the dark are running small businesses. Families who were choosing between food and kerosene are keeping both.

GivePower calls this the ripple effect of clean energy. We call it the whole point.

What You Can Do

If you're a California homeowner interested in going solar — and in aligning your energy choices with something larger than your monthly bill — My Home & Solar Solutions is the right partner.
We help qualifying California homeowners access solar and battery programs at little to no out-of-pocket cost. We work with TPO programs, CPUC-approved net billing structures, and utility incentives to make clean energy accessible to the widest possible range of homeowners and we do it in partnership with GivePower, because we believe every solar installation — here or anywhere — is a vote for a world where clean energy is available to everyone.

Visit www.myhomesolution.org to learn more about how to go solar in California, and to learn more about GivePower's work around the world.

When the power comes on, everything changes. Let's make sure it comes on for everyone.