Help Light the World!

[deep]

"In places where there is absolutely no electricity or running water, having light at night is a luxury many families don't have and never did and which we take for granted in developed countries," Duke said by e-mail. Bent, a former Marine and Navy pilot, served under diplomatic titles in volatile countries like Angola, Bosnia, Nigeria and Somalia in the early 1990s. In 2001 he went to work as the general manager of an oil exploration team off the coast of the Red Sea in Eritrea, for a company later acquired by the French oil giant Perenco. But the oil business, he said, "didn't satisfy my soul."

The inspiration for the flashlight hit him, he said, while working for Perenco in Asmara, Eritrea. One Sunday he visited a local dump to watch scavenging by baboons and birds of prey, and came upon a group of homeless boys who had adopted the dump as their home.

They took him home to a rural village where he noticed that many people had nothing to light their homes, schools and clinics at night.

With a little research, he discovered that close to 2 billion people around the world go without affordable access to light.

He worked with researchers, engineers and manufacturers, he said, at the Department of Energy, several American universities, and even NASA before finding a factory in China to produce a durable, cost-effective solar-powered flashlight whose shape was inspired by his wife's shampoo bottle.

The light, or sun torch, has a narrow solar panel on one side that charges the two batteries, which can last between 750 and 1,000 nights, and uses the more efficient light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to cast its light. "LEDs used to be very expensive," Bent said. "But in the last 18 months they've become cheaper, so distributing them on a widespread scale is possible."

The flashlights usually sell for about $19.95 in American stores, but he has established a BoGo -- for Buy One, Give One -- program on his website, BoGoLight.com, where if you buy one flashlight for $25, he will buy and ship another one to Africa, and donate $1 to one of the aid groups he works with.

 

[the iron horse]

A very bright idea and something many people really need.
http://bogolight.com/

Thanks for the info deep

 

[redhotswami]

all this time i was only thinking about water scarcity. light didn't even cross my mind. thanks for sharing!

 

[anitram]

Very, very cool idea.

 

[ntalwar]

This is similar to the $100 laptop idea, where a laptop sold in the US will allow one to be donated in Africa(or elsewhere). In the 60 minutes segment they showed how the laptop can also be the only source of light in a home (in Africa), and can be charged by hand cranking.

 

[JCOSTER]

Great Idea....but how can you be sure that his guy will send it over to Africa?

 

[indra]

Great Idea....but how can you be sure that his guy will send it over to Africa?

The same way you trust Bono.

 

[redhotswami]

This is similar to the $100 laptop idea, where a laptop sold in the US will allow one to be donated in Africa(or elsewhere). In the 60 minutes segment they showed how the laptop can also be the only source of light in a home (in Africa), and can be charged by hand cranking.

which company does that?

 

[JCOSTER]

The same way you trust Bono.

But Bono is Bono....

 

[the iron horse]

*elevation

 

[ntalwar]

which company does that?

The $100 laptop is being developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a Delaware-based, non-profit organization created by faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

 

[JanuaryStar]

Good idea, hope this works...