Empowering Global Communities
for a Better Tomorrow
We take electricity for granted. We flip a switch, and there are lights. We push a button, and we connect with the world. But many families in under-developed countries like Guatemala live the simplest of lives. They endure extreme hardships. A whole family may live in a smoky, dark, one-room hut with packed dirt floors, light seeping in through bamboo or wooden slats — cooking and sleeping, living and eating all in one tiny space. Through Project Indiana, Indiana’s electric cooperatives — and supporters like you — are empowering global communities one village at a time.
In 2012, the International Year of the Cooperative, two teams of Indiana lineworkers spent a month electrifying three villages in Guatemala. Lives were changed, both here and there.
Years later, this philanthropic spark evolved into Project Indiana and a mission of sustainable change. The project’s focus shifted beyond simply electrifying villages to making them better places to live — just as happened 80 years ago when electricity first came to rural Indiana. To do that, the Project Indiana team is now helping the Guatemalans form a cooperative and improve education, nutrition, water and health care in their villages.
In the end, it’s not only light that Project Indiana brings — it’s life. Hope. Progress. Opportunities. And it brings full circle what happened in the 1930s here in rural Indiana — people working together to light a community, one pole at a time, to make a better life.
You, too, can get involved. Learn more of what’s happening as the program grows and see the impact your contributions have.