News and views

Behind the scenes with Ian McEwan

Apart from looking forward to Christmas, and also the New Year, there’s a third reason to get excited this December… SolarAid’s BBC Radio 4 Appeal, with best selling author, Ian McEwan! Our Director of Fundraising, Richard Turner, gives us his reaction after watching from ‘behind the scenes’ at the appeal. Every so often, as a fundraiser, you have […]

Big News from Team Tanzania!

This week Team Tanzania sold their 100,000th solar light this year – a new record! We would like to say a huge thank you to our Field Teams who’ve been campaigning tirelessly in Morogoro, Iringa & Njombe. It was good to see them all arrive back after their long time away, and our very own […]

Go Team Kenya!

Our Project Manager for Kenya, Victor Koyier, gives us an insightful update on how the team are getting on, what keeps them motivated, and the hurdles they face distributing solar lights across the country: There’s more than meets the eye when we talk about the school campaigns project. It’s harder than it looks to ensure that each […]

Who’s the biggest solar light seller in Africa?

Who’s the biggest solar light seller in Africa?… SunnyMoney! Our CEO, Steve Andrews, recently took a trip to Senegal for the Lighting Africa conference; the third international off-grid lighting and trade fair. To our delight, he discovered SunnyMoney has surpassed the competition by selling 203,000 solar lights in the last 3 years, making it the biggest seller of solar lights in Africa! “Two […]

Switching kids onto solar

As you know, here at SolarAid we’re passionate about solar. And solar education is a big part of what we do, not just in Africa but in the UK too. For several years we have been running Sunny Schools, an innovative climate, energy-saving and solar education programme for teachers, and thanks to our partnership with Lightsource Renewable […]

Bad Light – A week with Brave Mhonie

View all three films here. Today marks a the beginning of three filmed interviews with SunnyMoney Malawi Field Coordinator, Brave Mhonie. Brave is on Twitter too so simply drop him a tweet and ask a question at any time about his work. It’s a great opportunity to engage with someone who has experienced first-hand both the success […]

Meet Pippa, our interim Managing Director

We are delighted to announce the arrival of Pippa Palmer as interim Managing Director, while we move through the next phase of strategic planning. The appointment comes at a very exciting time, as we prepare to galvanize efforts to eradicate the use of kerosene for lighting in Africa by the end of the decade. The […]

What does it take to be a genuine solar guy?

Bomet is a Kenyan county that is divided into four major districts; Bomet district, Chepalungu district, Sotik district and Konoin district. A sizeable amount of the population in the county does not have access to grid electricity which means most of them use kerosene lanterns. With this in mind we formulated a solar light campaign […]

Plug into the sun – charging your phone with solar

So, other than solar lighting, what else do our SunnyMoney lights power? Digital Content Manager, Ralph Greenland takes a look at mobile phone charging via the sun in his new blog. Watch Ralph’s video, above, or for even more, take a look at his blog below: “The concept of solar phone charging isn’t new; even since I joined SolarAid in […]

All Ears for super Susie Wheeldon

Susie reads an extract from her book at the All Ears event. Our very own superhero, Susie Wheeldon, spoke of her Solar Cycle Diary adventures (and misadventures) in front of a captivated audience of 130 on Tuesday night.  The event brought together a trilogy of inspiring speakers, including writer and coach, Gaylene Gould and entrepreneur and humanitarian Sean Carasso of Falling Whistles – […]