Brighter World Initiative

Beyond delivering electricity, electric cooperatives are committed to creating new opportunities and supporting programs that help people and communities thrive.

Through the Brighter World Initiative, North Carolina’s electric cooperatives have extended their gifts, and the cooperative way, to bring first-time access to electricity to people in rural villages, transforming everyday life in ways many of us take for granted.

El Plan Nuevo Amanecer, Guatemala

In the spring of 2026, 15 volunteer lineworkers representing eight cooperatives built three miles of primary and secondary line, bringing electricity to more than 50 homes, as well as two churches, a school and a health clinic in the village of El Plan Nuevo Amanecer.

El Plan Nuevo Amanecer is in the Lachúa region of northern Guatemala, where most families rely on agriculture and day labor to support their households. Before receiving electricity, residents cooked over open fires, lit their homes by flame and found ways to preserve food without power.

For local residents, having electricity in their homes — something many had only experienced while visiting neighboring villages and larger cities — was an opportunity they had been waiting on for years.

Along with electrifying the village, North Carolina’s electric cooperatives provided each home with a two-burner electric stovetop, replacing smoky open flames with a cleaner, safer cooking option. Volunteers also supplied the community health clinic with essential medical supplies.

Community leaders shared that access to electricity will transform daily life and help create new opportunities for generations to come.

Laphía, Bolivia

In the spring of 2019, 13 volunteer lineworkers representing seven co-ops built five miles of power line infrastructure that connected this central Bolivian village to the power grid. More than 75 buildings were connected, including a school, bringing new opportunities and advantages to the 120 residents of the rural, agricultural community.

At an elevation of 11,600 feet, the people of Laphía subsist by growing potatoes and flowers. Most live in modest homes of adobe brick and thatch roofs. Before the Brighter World Initiative, none had access to food refrigeration or the ability to use electric devices for household chores or to aid in their economic growth.

More than one billion people live without electric power around the world, according to the International Energy Agency, and only 66 percent of rural Bolivians had access to electricity as of 2016.

According to village leaders, access to electricity is creating new economic and educational opportunities and a stronger community, as young people will be able to stay in the village, rather than moving to the city. Connection to the grid is also providing overhead lighting for the school building, as well as extended access to a small computer lab.

Both trips were coordinated through North Carolina Electric Cooperatives’ Brighter World Initiative in partnership with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) International Foundation, which brings electricity to communities around the world.