Off-grid lighting and charging
Portable solar kits
Off-grid lighting and charging: changing the daily lives of rural households
For the hundreds of millions of families in rural regions of the developing world who do not have access to the electricity grid – nor will they for many years to come – having electricity in their homes thanks to a small solar kit for off-grid lighting and recharging means a big change in the quality of their daily lives, because it allows:
- to eliminate kerosene lamps, with all the consequences they entail in terms of indoor pollution, respiratory diseases, burns and house fires – not to mention the burden of buying kerosene on the budgets of families at the base of the social pyramid
- to have the opportunity to study in the evenings for all those children and young people who have to make a daily work contribution to their families: fetching water, looking after the animals, collecting firewood… – and there is no doubt that education is a major route out of poverty for peasant families and, in general, the most powerful agent of social change
- recharge mobile phones continuously, and at zero cost – which means not only staying in touch with relatives, but also accessing mobile money services, taking advantage of opportunities such as the timely sale of agricultural products
- recharge a radio, the real social media in rural regions of the developing world – eliminating expensive, short-lived and polluting conventional batteries.
At the village level, solar street and market lighting and solar-powered community TV offer greater possibilities for social interaction and access to information, knowledge and entertainment, bringing new life to neglected, impoverished and depopulated rural areas in the global South.
