To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re sharing 4 LuminAID partner projects run by amazing women. These women don’t have the resources of a large NGO but saw an area of need and decided to do something about it. Take a look at the ways they are sharing safe light around the world.
Sharing Safe Light in Southern Kenya
Corien Norder of Stichting Mtangani, a Dutch nonprofit, traveled to the village of Mtangani in southern Kenya to deliver LuminAID lights. The year prior, two huts in the village had caught on fire when a sleeping child knocked over a kerosene lamp. A village carpenter and his children were sleeping in the huts. Two of the children died and three survived, but with serious burns.
Upon learning of this tragic story, Corien and Stichting Mtangani launched a campaign to raise money for solar lanterns, so the villagers would not have to rely on dangerous kerosene lamps any longer. They were eventually able to deliver 166 LuminAID lights to the village which will not only keep them safe, but also allow the children of the village to continue studying safely after dark.
Read Corien’s full story here.
At the Intersection of Adventure and Aid
Sunny Stroeer is a professional mountain athlete and longtime friend of LuminAID. On one of her expeditions in Nepal, she realized just how much of an impact LuminAID lights could have for climbing sherpas and porters, but also for the many villages in the mountains that are completely disconnected from the electric grid. For many families in the area, the only source of light in their modest huts is the smoky kitchen hearth.
On her next trip to Nepal, she loaded up her backpack, already heavy with her trekking gear, with LuminAID lights to distribute to those families most in need. With the help of her interpreter and friend, Mingma, Sunny was able to find the most remote huts and give the lanterns to families who greatly benefited from the reliable light source.
Read Sunny’s full story here.
Empowering Women with Water and Light
Jane Brinton and Erin Toppenberg created The Waterbearers to distribute water filters in areas in need of a sustainable solution to obtaining clean water. Their main focus is uplifting women whose families and societies expect them to routinely risk their lives to obtain water, the “water bearers” as it were.
Jane and Erin recently visited Uganda in the name of clean drinking water and brought LuminAID solar lanterns with them. The women they met spoke about how vulnerable they had felt walking miles in the dark in the early morning to get water. When given a LuminAID lantern to take with them on these daily journeys, the women reported a sense of empowerment. The organization operates around the world, with additional projects in Ecuador, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and beyond.
Read The Waterbearers’ full story here.
Lighting the Path to Safety
When Kayra Martinez, a flight attendant based out of Frankfurt, Germany, heard about the horrible conditions in which asylum seekers were made to live in, she was inspired to leverage her lifestyle to make a difference. She began organizing collections of needed items in Frankfurt, and flew to Greece to volunteer in the refugee camps in the north of the country. Thus Love Without Borders was born.
She and Ruhi Akhtar, the founder of Refugee Biriyani & Bananas, took LuminAID lights to a refugee camp in Chios, Greece. The lights made a big impact for the Syrian refugees living in the camps. They reported that the lights gave people their dignity back, allowing them a sense of comfort and safety in the dark.
Read Kayra and Ruhi’s full story here.
