I’m Kat Harrison, the Social Impact & Research Manager at SolarAid. I started at SolarAid just over a year ago to set up our impact measurement and research function; if you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know all of this, of course. In just one year, we’ve made incredible progress and today marks the release […]
A charity with customers? This week is National Customer Service Week. You might wonder what National Customer Service week has to do with a charity working in Africa, but as many of you already know – we don’t believe in giving solar lights away. We sell them through our social enterprise SunnyMoney, at a full but fair […]
SolarAid and Solarcentury Chairman, Jeremy Leggett, has been recognised for his ‘outstanding contribution to the global solar PV industry’ with another top gong at the Solar Industry Awards 2013. David Ridsdale, editor in chief at Solar International says: “Jeremy Leggett set himself up as an environmental champion who wanted to also make use of his business and […]
You might remember us talking lots about our exciting new project in Senegal – not only a new country for SolarAid’s social enterprise, SunnyMoney, but also a new model for getting solar lights to rural Africa which was developed by the SunnyMoney Brains innovations unit. The World Bank/Lighting Africa funded SunnyMoney to deliver this project in partnership with the Senegalese Rural Electrification Agency and the Ministry of […]
When the sun sets across rural Africa many families reach for kerosene to light their home. Often burnt in a homemade tin lamp, the flame emits thick black smoke damaging a family’s health as well as the environment. It is expensive, accounting for around 20% of household income, and barely emits enough light for a […]
The stifling effect of kerosene light dependency has been on our radar for some time now. As you may have heard us utter once or twice in the past, kerosene used for lighting alone can eat up to 20% of a household’s income and emits harmful fumes – the equivalent of around 40 cigarettes per […]
Last night SolarAid was thrilled to receive the 2013 Ashden International Gold Award for its work getting solar lights to students in rural Africa. CEO, Steve Andrews, accepted the award but dedicated it to the local African teams who,“spend months away from their wives, children and husbands, out in the field miles and miles away from […]
We have just received official confirmation from our SunnyMoney teams in Africa that we have smashed through the half a million solar light barrier. Our teams sold a further 58,000 lights in May taking us up to the grand total of 517,265. That’s a potential reach of over 3 million rural Africans. Not bad for a charity that […]
John Keane, the SunnyMoney Managing Director, talks about our successes and failures in his latest blog. Here at SolarAid we firmly believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to learn from our mistakes. John notes that in the past six months we sold more solar lamps in Africa than we did in the previous six years. This is […]
Here is a fantastic blog from one of our intrepid Field Coordinators in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Mayase M’Shanga works for our non-profit trading arm, SunnyMoney. She organises and conducts head teacher meetings, delivers lights, makes presentations and helps conduct research to ensure we’re being as effective as possible with our programmes. The ground work […]