Access to electricity is critical for modern economic and social development. Yet, in Nicaragua, half of the roughly 5 million inhabitants do not have access to this resource, which shuts them out of a host of technologies that promote education, public health, and economic development. In this conversation, Kriss Deiglmeier, executive director of the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, interviews Mathias Craig, founder of blueEnergy, a nonprofit organization that provides a low-cost, sustainable solution to the energy needs of marginalized communities in Nicaragua.

Craig discusses challenges the organization has faced in its broad mission to bring both technology and training to the region; the organization's rationale for delivering its services to particularly remote locations; advice for social entrepreneurs on how to get international projects off the ground; what funders should know that would facilitate projects such as blueEnergy; and how the organization plans to expand electrification into new communities. blueEnergy won the 2007 Accenture Award for economic development, administered by the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif.