Solar-powered villages
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
A,
Nearly 800 million people worldwide live without electricity. It’s a silent killer – the deadly fumes inhaled from kerosene lamps are equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day.
The crisis is especially acute in Northern Uganda, where 99% of the population can’t access the national grid and more children die from respiratory illness than anything else.
But there’s a proven, simple solution: solar lights.
An amazing organisation called Solar Links works with community-led groups to install solar lighting in rural households in Uganda – and they’re racing to get these lights in more than 500 homes before skyrocketing food and kerosene costs drive them further into darkness.
They won’t start installing until there are enough funds to light every home in the village so no one is left out – and together we can make it happen quickly, with no red tape.
Each light costs just $20 – can you chip in so that together we can empower an entire village... with solar lights?
If you’ve saved your payment information with SumOfUs, your donation will go through immediately:
Chip in $92Chip in $100Chip in $75Chip in $38Chip in another amount
Without electricity, people can spend up to half their lives in darkness. After sundown, children can’t study, farmers can’t finish chores and entire communities are forced to shut down.
The alternatives like kerosene make homes a dangerous place to be – leaving everyone inside vulnerable to a fire suddenly erupting and a dangerous amount of black carbon fumes. A single kerosene lamp emits up to one tonne of carbon over five years!
And for the first time in years, the number of people without electricity has actually increased in sub-Saharan Africa during the pandemic.
That’s why the work Solar Links is doing with local communities is so important.
Households can save as much as 30% of their income by replacing kerosene lamps with solar lights – money that can be used for food, school fees, bedding and roofing. And because there are no carbon emissions from solar lighting, people live healthier lives for longer.
If you’ve saved your payment information with SumOfUs, your donation will go through immediately:
Chip in $92Chip in $100Chip in $75Chip in $38Chip in another amount
Solar Links has already given 15,000 families, schools, hospitals and clinics in Uganda, South Sudan and Burundi the gift of light – transforming entire communities one by one.
The impact reaches way beyond each individual home. Every family contributes a small amount towards the cost of the light in the following year, funding solar lighting in further communities. And because they train members of the community as Lighting Engineers, Solar Links empowers communities to keep the technology working properly and carrying forward the mission of bringing light to their neighbours.
Now, Solar Links is ready to go with an urgent plan to provide solar home lighting systems to 540 subsistence farming households in Northern Uganda. They just need the funds to do it.
A, it’s rare that a single donation can make such a huge difference almost instantaneously.
If each of us chips in what we can, together we can transform an entire village with solar lights – can you help?
If you’ve saved your payment information with SumOfUs, your donation will go through immediately:
Chip in $92Chip in $100Chip in $75Chip in $38Chip in another amount
P.S. Any extra raised will go to power our campaigns against fossil fuels and in support of renewable energy projects worldwide.
Thanks for all that you do,
Allison, Yasmin and the SumOfUs team
More information:
Masaka’s journey from rural town to key commercial hub
Monitor. July 2022.
Access to electricity
IEA. April 2022.
Solar Links Initiative
Solar Links.
Energy revolution promises to transform East Africa
BBC. February 2013.
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