COMMUNITY
Distributing Solar Lights in Lebanon
Mar, 2022
“The sun is an amazing thing. It gives us nine hundred and seventy trillion kilowatt hours of energy each day. That’s enough energy to give every single person on the planet a lightbulb that would shine bright for their entire lifetime.” — Solight
In an era of 5G mobile networks and Mars landers, far too many families in Lebanon are being forced to learn to live their daily lives without electricity.
Imagine spending almost every evening in your own home in darkness. Now imagine that your home is in an urban refugee camp with no formal infrastructure. Because the lights on the narrow streets in your camp are always out, you’re afraid of falling in the pitch black stairwell in your building. So you’ve been staying home each night long before the pandemic lockdowns forced the rest of the world to do the same.
This is reality for many families in Lebanon who live in impoverished areas, and especially in refugee camps and settlements where there is no formal connection to the electricity grid. These days, the power is sometimes out for days on end even for those connected to the grid.
To help make the lives of families in this situation a little easier, Anera has imported a shipment of Solight’s SolarPuff lights. These collapsible, origami-shaped lights are recharged by sunlight.
The lights are produced by Solight Design. The company was founded by Alice Min Soo Chun, an architect and professor at Columbia University. Chun says,
“We started Solight Design because climate change is real, and poverty and injustice are real — but a small solar lamp has the power to bring beauty, hope and utility to everyone. Every child should have a SolarPuff so they can study at night. For the elderly, it becomes unsafe to move around in the dark and risk tripping or falling. We can prevent broken bones just by having light.”
The SolarPuff devices are waterproof and can provide light for up to 12 hours on a full charge.
Thanks to a generous donation from an Anera supporter, we were recently able to provide 261 of Lebanon’s most vulnerable families with at least one SolarPuff.
“Every child should have a SolarPuff so they can study at night.”
Fairouz is a 40-year-old Syrian mother of five residing in the south of Lebanon. Unlike most Syrians in Lebanon, she and her family have only been in Lebanon for a few months. They were forced to leave Syria after her husband passed away. So she and her kids went to live with their relatives here in Lebanon.
Fairouz lived through the Syrian conflict and witnessed terrible suffering. Yet, when she arrived in Lebanon, she was shocked at the lack of basic services and how people pay two bills for water and electricity. One bill is for the official public electricity service that rarely offers more than a few hours of power. And the other payment is for the private neighborhood diesel generator.
These generators are owned by private individuals who comprise the so-called ‘generator mafia.’ These people generally prevent anyone else from buying a generator, even if they can afford it. They take advantage of the desperate circumstances to sell electricity at high rates to a captive market.
“I can no longer pay for the generator bill,” Fairouz says. “Its prices have gotten very high, and it doesn’t even provide many hours of electricity. We wait for the nearly nonexistent government electricity to do our laundry and maybe turn on the fridge.”
Fairouz and her children were fascinated by the small solar-charging SolarPuff lantern. The design of the device looks quite a lot like the traditional Ramadan lantern, or fanous.
“It helps us move around the house at night. It’s much safer than candles, and costs us nothing!”
Nisreen Rifai is a 35-year-old Palestinian resident of Ein El Hilweh Refugee Camp and a mother of four. Like most refugee families, her living conditions have become unbearable, especially in the last year.
“We do not have a generator subscription, so we wait for the government electricity that is only available off-and-on for less than five hours a day.”
Having a SolarPuff means that Nisreen has more flexibility in her daily routine. Now, if she wants, she can do chores like folding the laundry and washing dishes in the evening.
It also means that her children can finish their homework at a decent hour, rather than waiting for the electricity to come on.
“This gift is very useful, especially during long power outages when we don't even have charged phones for light. At least we can move around the house at night without bumping into things.”
“It helps us move around the house at night. It’s much safer than candles, and costs us nothing!”
Anera delivered the SolarPuff lights to local community partners and educational centers across Lebanon, including the Women’s Programs Association, the municipality of Muhammara, and the Union of Relief and Development Associations.
