Between 1996 and March 2011, the Rura Energy Development Programme (REDP) enabled more than 57,000 households to light their homes, cook their food and power their enterprises from sources of clean energy. This happened in the course of REDP developing a successful community-managed model for extending access to electricity in Nepal's rural areas. The programme covers 31 out of 75 districts of Nepal and has helped formulate the policies and the institutional framework for the decentralized development and management of rural energy supplies. Increased access to renewable energy contributes to MDG1 by powering improved livelihoods, to MDG2 by lighting children's studies, to MDG 3, 4 and 5 by removing the wood collecting burden from women and smoky wood burning stoves from their homes and to MDG7 by lessening reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting and forest-depleting sources of energy.