A just energy transition needs the people to deliver it.
In most of the places where decentralised renewable energy matters most, the workforce to install, operate, and sustain these systems is largely informal. Skilled, often, but uncredentialed, unconnected to employers, and outside the systems that would help the sector grow.
We work on that gap.
Mee Panyar is based in Myanmar and works on workforce development for the renewable energy sector, combining grassroots experience and on-the-ground delivery with systems-level thinking about what an actionable workforce model looks like in fragmented and emerging contexts.
We train solar technicians. We collaborate with employers. We work with TVET institutions, communities, and partners. And we use what we learn to design and test programmes that can be adapted in other places facing similar questions.
Our Work
We work on workforce development for decentralized renewables through two connected areas. The workforce we train installs and maintains the systems communities depend on. The community energy creates the demand and context that makes the workforce viable.
Workforce Development
We research workforce dynamics and apply sectoral workforce planning to renewable energy. The goal is to identify the levers that drive quality and equitable access to renewable technologies, and to use those levers to support sustainable adoption.
This includes hands-on solar training, employer engagement with more than 50 solar companies, TVET partnerships, and the methodologies needed to do workforce planning in a market where most of the workforce is informal and most of the data does not exist.
Community Energy
We work with communities and local partners to design and support decentralized renewable energy systems. Our focus is on the conditions that make these systems last over time: community ownership, local technical capacity, and trained people who can maintain them.
ongoing projects
Workforce Development Programme
Right now, we are running our largest workforce development programme to date, reaching 800 young people through TVET institutions in Mandalay, Ayeyarwady, Bago, and Shan.
RE:Build Project
We are also continuing to support community energy access and post-earthquake recovery efforts through our RE:Build initiative.
OUr approach
Most organizations working on workforce development in the energy sector operate at the policy or education level. They build qualification frameworks, credentialing pathways, large-scale skills strategies. That work matters, but it assumes a functioning formal labour market.
In a lot of the places where the energy transition matters most, that assumption does not hold. Most of the renewable energy workforce is informal. There are no reliable occupational maps, no consistent employment records, no skills frameworks designed for what the work actually looks like on the ground. Standard approaches were not built for these contexts and for technology and energy systems that are increasingly decentralized.
We work at a different level: between the trained individual and the employer who needs them, in places where those two sides are rarely connected. We combine grassroots delivery with systems-level programme design. We test what works. And we use what we learn to build approaches that can be adapted in similar contexts across the region.
our partners
WORK WITH US
If you’re looking to support solar workforce development or community energy access in Myanmar, we’d like to hear from you.
We work with 50+ companies across Myanmar’s solar sector. If you’re hiring, we can connect you with trained graduates.
