Fight Extreme Poverty: Bring Light on Earth Day with Unite-to-Light

Listen to how Unite-to-Light is fighting extreme poverty with LED solar-powered light.

Unite-to-Light, an organization founded through the collaboration of Engineers without Borders and Nobel Prize Laureate at UCSB, manufactures and distributes a small ultra-bright LED solar-powered lamp worldwide to help fight extreme poverty. According to Economist Magazine, 1.6 billion people, or 1/5 of the world, do not have direct access to electricity and rely on kerosene, candles or firewood for lighting – all of which are relativity expensive and provide inferior light for reading. Another one billion only have intermittent and unreliable electricity.

Education is a key component to fighting extreme poverty, as is explained in the interview. Light is critical for education because of the need for families to work during the daylight hours. By lighting the dark, Unite-to-Light fights poverty and its associated disease, hunger and isolation:

• A mother reports that her children no longer cough and sneeze black mucus;
• A large family reports that the savings in kerosene expense are enough to feed them for a week out of every month;
• Children and adults can read with effective, safe, light;
• Medical procedures can be performed using clear, bright, reliable lighting;
• A home for children orphaned through genocide, or abandoned or abused can provide each child with a light and can sell lights in the surrounding area as a fund raising activity to allow them to expand services;
• Women of the community can support their families and help their communities by distributing the lights.

All of these are real examples of how Unite-to-Light is helping fight extreme poverty. A previous interview with Africa Schools of Kenya also describes the importance of education in helping women rise above the cultural ties that have often kept them in early marriage, young child birth and female genital mutilation.

It is widely accepted that women are another critical key to fighting poverty. By providing them with means to increase the daily income for their families, they also invest in their community to help others. Unite-to-Light has a distribution model that facilitates individuals to start their own business distributing lights. Already, in their first 2 years, Unite-to-Light has doubled its distribution and is on track to continue that rate of doubling each year.

To listen to the first interview with Claude Dorais in May of 2010, click here.