Social energy is a generative good. It is at the heart of a people's movement and is its key resource. It occurs when people decide to work together to achieve something they believe in. When communities can harness social energy in their development activities their consequences far exceed anything which could previously have been imagined.
Social energy has four essential components: ideas, ideals, friendship and leadership:
- Ideas: good ideas are attractive, they provide ingenious and often new solutions to old problems. With Nishi the idea of self-education and voluntary help have appeal and work.
- Ideals: point to a common, greater good. Most ideals involve generosity and altruism. With Nishi this is the ideal of eradicating illiteracy from a community and the alleviation of poverty that is associated with this.
- Friendship: when someone is friendly they are happy to help and co-operate. Nishi literacy is a friendly, social activity where people help each other to overcome the challenges of learning. Nishi groups often continue as study groups when a 'course' has been completed – in part because of the friendship that is at the heart of the group.
- Leadership: leaders produce and articulate ideas others will accept. Without leadership it is difficult to generate and sustain social energy.
Each of these components like social energy itself is 'generative' and increases rather than diminishes with 'use'.
 See also Uphoff N 1996 Learning from Gal Oya London IT Publications. Also briefly summarised in Chapts 10 &11 of Cawthera A 1997 Let's Teach Ourselves Eldis website.