Between them, Grace and Steven have ten children: four of their own and six who are the nieces and nephews left in their care when Steven's two brothers both died of  HIV/AIDS.  Moved by his own experience of family loss, Steven has become a counselor to families of AIDS patients at the Mild May Hospital outside of Kampala.  He is employed in meaningful work, but it does not provide enough income to meet the needs of a family of 12. 

The biggest cash expense in their household is the responsibility to pay the 'school fees' that are required to send children to school in Uganda.  Yes, even the mandatory public school system requires school fees which can put primary and especially secondary education out of reach for many families, including not just the destitute, but also the working poor like Grace and Steven.

Grace became a Solar Sister Entrepreneur this year to help provide for the family's needs.  Within three months, she tripled the family income.  The money has made a tremendous difference in their lives.  As Grace says, "Now we are able to send all of the children to school, the boys and the girls." 

When I visited their home, the children were all eager to show me their new school workbooks and even the youngest daughter read to me.  With the help of their own SunKing Pro Lamp that they bought from Solar Sister, they are able to gather around the table after dinner and chores to do their homework.

Steven actively helps Grace with her business by introducing her to his wide network in the hospital community.  People often ask whether the men support their wives' work.  Take a look at Steven boldly wearing his very own "Solar Sister" t-shirt and his beatific smile, and I think you can see for yourself just how proud he is of Grace.

Growing up in rural Uganda in a home without electricity did not prepare Lilliane for a career in technology, but with an admirable amount of imagination and determination that is just where she is headed.  Along with 12 other women from villages and towns across Uganda, Lilliane participated in advanced training provided by Solar Sister and our technology partner UltraTec to learn how to fix and maintain the solar lights that she sells as a Solar Sister Entrepreneur. 

The hallmark of a great engineer is the love of taking things apart and putting them back together again, learning how things work by tinkering and experimenting, problem solving and creating.  It is this “We Can Do It” attitude that the Solar Sister Entrepreneurs bring to their advanced technical training classes to become expert solar engineers. 

“I am so grateful for the awesome training. Thumbs up. Trust me, I will repair all the lamps.”  With confidence Lilliane can now provide full sales and after-market service for her solar business. Working in eastern Uganda where less than 5% of the population has access to electricity, she is building a market of loyal customers by expanding the use of solar technology to replace the smoky, unsafe and expensive kerosene lamps used for lighting homes and businesses. Her ability to replace batteries and fix the common problems caused by using technology in rough environments gives her customers confidence in their investment in solar.  As she can attest, good sales depend on good service.

Solar Sister uses the power of women’s enterprise to distribute clean energy technology in rural Africa. The women become Solar Sister Entrepreneurs and use a direct sales business model to sell solar lamps, cell phone chargers and other clean energy technology to their natural networks of family, friends and neighbors.  The program has two powerful impacts: the women earn income to support their families and lift them out of poverty, and the business provides access to life changing technologies to unelectrified communities.

During this training session, which was held in Solar Sister’s headquarters at the Hub Kampala on a beautiful day in May, women traveled from across Uganda to take part and increase their technical skills.  The women were selected based on their potential as Solar Sister Entrepreneurs and as a reward for growing their local businesses.  Through their business success, the women have become leaders in their communities and serve as role models to demonstrate that women can be tech savvy entrepreneurs.

These women are fearless learners. They ignore the common attitude that women are not technically adept or suited to business and forge ahead to become experts in the technology and build thriving businesses. I truly believe that their grass-roots knowledge of local needs combined with the training and support that they receive from Solar Sister, they are the best ‘last mile’ distribution sales team in the world for clean energy technology.

They are evangelists for clean energy solutions as a way to help people in their communities break out of the cycle of energy poverty. Replacing the toxic kerosene with clean, safe, affordable solar light has tremendous impact on education, health and productivity.  With light and electricity, families have the fundamental tools to powerfully transform their lives. Solar Sister Entrepreneurs are bringing light, hope and opportunity to their communities with access to clean energy.

Here is a glimpse of the energy and excitement that the Solar Sisters bring to their new skill acquisition.  We Can Do It!

Solar Sister is truly a global community.  Even our founding team, Katherine, Neha and Evelyn, come from three different continents and three very varied backgrounds.  We are an American banker/mom, an Indian energy economist/poet and a Ugandan ICT geek/fashionista, saving the world one solar light at a time. It is this cross fertilization of ideas, cultures and experiences that gives Solar Sister its rich foundation.  The power of a global sisterhood.  But even with all the differences, what is more amazing is that we have so much in common.  We are birds of a feather.   In this guest post by Neha, a letter 'home' from a recent trip to Nairobi and Uganda, you can see some of the magic that comes from making these cross cultural connections.  -- Katherine
 
Notes from the Field from Neha

A warm hello from a rainy Nairobi. My conference here went on well - very educational to learn about the business of improved cook stoves for households, good connections and great opportunity to see Nairobi! It is so much like India that I can see why so many Indians have chosen to settle here (and not return after the British brought them here to build the railroads way back as I’m told!). Weather is also like India - it is long rainy season right now. The city is lush green - there are bougainvillea flower rows everywhere that remind me of home as well. 

The basement conference room where I spent the largest part of my time on the trip had more mirrors than I’ve ever seen in a business meeting– so much that my good friend Evelyn and I awarded it the most “gender sensitive” conference award – wherever you look – there you are!
 
I had the incredible opportunity to visit the office of the Green Belt Movement which was founded by late Wangari Maathai - the first African woman ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work to help women across Kenya earn a livelihood planting trees, and protecting the environment in the process.  I had the opportunity to briefly meet Wangari at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. soon after she got the Nobel Prize. I remember holding her hands as she signed a copy of her biography “Unbowed” for me and telling her I’d like some magic to rub off me. Wangari said (so I read),  "When we plant seeds, we plant seeds of peace and hope”.

On this trip, I met Wanjira Maathai - Wangari's daughter, who was so kind and warm. She took us to their training center, which is like a huge lutyens bungalow in Delhi. If I recall correct, the Green Belt Movement got the home from a family (an expat – perhaps a former ambassador – trying to remember the exact words as I was absorbed in the pure joy of green grass and purple flowers). The former owner wanted this beautiful place to be nurtured and serve long after he's gone. It was filled with adobe houses beyond the main Victorian villa. Then there were baby baboons playfully doing their gymnastics and sunbirds flying. I wrote a poem called Sunbird not so long ago, which was more on the metaphor of sunbird and hope but had never seen one. This one was beautiful - really tiny - smaller than the palm from the fleeting glimpse I got. Its feathers were shiny blue and yellow.  She (I am taking the liberty of making “it “a she for I don’t want to make the bird a thing with a “it”) - she has her nest in the wavelike thick green vine running through the sunroom where we sat to talk about things of hope, culture, change, poetry and such. Wanjira, treated us to what was closest to a home cooked meal - rice, beans, and greens …delicious! So this was wonderful.

Today I had a wonderful meeting at United Nations Environment Program  - they have recently featured our work and are so keen to help Solar Sister's message and work reach many more people. I met with Nicole who heads UNEP’s language team in the Division of Communications and Public Information. Nicole and I spoke not as if we were meeting for the first time but as if we had known each other for long – moved by similar things, coming from totally different parts of the world.  We spoke about women being like Octopuses – one person filling so many roles, touching so many lives in so many ways – like a Octopus with many hands! Nicole shared great ideas to support our work. As I was leaving, I told her that one of the most beautiful parts of my work is that I go to meetings to meet strangers, acquaintances and colleagues – only to go back with friends. And as I stepped out of UNEP’s office with its lily pond and demo solar panel – I said bye to my new friend!

Earlier, last week when I was in Uganda - I hosted a team from the U.S. State Dept to meet one of our teams in Mityana, Central Uganda. It was really moving as I asked one women entrepreneur from a village who was getting prize for her great performance what Solar Sister means to her - she said, "You look at me, my face is shining because of Solar Sister -  I no longer depend on kerosene. I have got friends, confidence and more so, from my first income, I bought a decoration piece for my house!" Such a small thing - a decoration piece - but so profound for our lives are made of small things after all. I feel very blessed to be a part of this.

Writing to you as I reflect on last few days, waiting for a quick meeting with one of our product suppliers and then will settle the bill to head to Kampala this evening.

Hope everybody is doing good. Will talk to you soon.

Finally, will end on what Wangari Maathai said while telling story of a tiny hummingbird (please take 2.01 minutes of your lives to see here - I love the story!)

"I will be a hummingbird; I will do the best I can" Professor Wangari Maathai.

Love (& Regards),

Neha

Today I met with Mama Penny.  She is a gracious and lovely woman, but she is also a strong woman who takes no nonsense from anyone.  Mama Penny bought one of our solar lights a year ago to provide light in her home in Kampala, even though she lives in an apartment that has electricity, the service from the electric company is so expensive and so bad and the load shedding is so frequent, she highly values the light that the solar lamp provides. 

I asked her if the lamp was continuing to provide good service, and she told me, "No, I no longer have the lamp."  Oh No! I knew she had valued it so much, so I feared that it had been stolen or broken.  This is the story of Mama Penny's lamp (in her own words, as best as I can recreate from the story she told me).

"Several months ago I read in the paper about a women who lives in a small area near my place [Mama Penny has a farm outside of Kampala where she grows vegetables, off of the Hoima road].  The woman had five small children, and was written up in the paper because she had just given birth to four more.  GIving birth to quadruplets is unusual, and by a small miracle, mother and babies all survived.   I decided to go visit this woman to see if perhaps I could provide for her some small comfort or food."

Mama Penny traveled with a friend and their driver to the place where the woman lived, but of course there is no road sign or place marker in that rural area, so she kept asking along the way "Do you know the woman with four babies?" and each person would point her a little further into the bush. Finally a man on a bicycle agreed to show her the last few turns down the dirt path by strapping his bike to the back of the car and then sitting on the hood of the car and telling the driver to turn left here, right here until they stopped in front of the house.

"The little wooden house was leaning so far over to the side that we had to lean over ourselves in order to enter the door.  We found no one home, except the four tiny babies.  One was on the straw mattress on the floor, the other three had rolled off the mattress and were on the floor.  All of them were crying.  All of them were naked.  Since there were four of us, including the bicycle man, we each picked up a baby and tried to stop the crying.  Then we went looking for the mama.  But we could not find her.  We walked down the path and finally found an old blind woman in a house nearby sitting in her chair.  It was the babies grandmother.  I asked her, 'Are these your grandbabies? Where is the mama? Why aren't you caring for them?"  She told me the mother had gone off to the stream to wash the clothes and the big sister was caring for the babies while the mother was away.  We looked for the big sister but could not find her."  

"The bicycle man went to collect the mother from the stream where she had gone to wash the clothes.  When she got back she found the 'big sister' asleep under a blanket. She was so small under that blanket that we had not even noticed her. We thought it was just a rag piled in the corner of the house.  It turned out the big sister was a young girl of 6 who had arrived home from her long walk from school, she was hungry and tired, and without any food until dinner that night, had dropped off to sleep, even with all four babies crying she was so tired she did not wake up."

The mother and grandmother began to berate the big sister for falling asleep, but Mama Penny intervened. "She is just a baby herself. And she has walked all the way to school and back today and is tired and hungry. Leave her alone.  Where is the father? Where are your relatives? Why did you leave the babies alone with just this other baby?"  It turned out that the father had run off, not being able to live up to the demands of this latest family responsibility, and the only other relative was the blind Grandmother. 

Since the mother had been found, Mama Penny left the food that she had brought and went back home.  That night she couldn't sleep, thinking about the mother, the big sister, the other children, and the four babies. Their house was about to fall on them, they had no light, no water nearby, not enough food, no income.  So the next day, Mama Penny went to the market and bought some necessities: flour, millet, cooking oil, other foods, a tadooba (kerosene lamp), and parrafin (kerosene) and took them to the family.  They were very grateful for this unexpected largesse and Mama Penny went back home.  Again that night she couldn't sleep because she thought about the danger of the tadooba: there was no table or shelf to put the lamp or the kerosene, so it was just put on the floor near the bed.  She worried that the children would drink the kerosene, or tip it over and cause a fire, which would catch the straw mattress, the wooden home and thatch roof on fire. 

So the next day she woke up and went back to the family, this time taking her own solar lamp to give them.  She had been using the solar lamp (a d.light Nova) and loved it, especially because it has the ability to charge phones as well as provide light.  But she decided the woman with four babies needed it more than she did, so she gave it to her with instructions on how to use it, and explained how she could charge up her neighbors phones to earn a little bit of income. 

"She still uses that light, and it is still working, and she makes a little money each day charging up phones for the bicycle man and other neighbors, so she has a bit to buy food for the babies."

Mama Penny visits the woman from time to time, checking in on her and providing some assistance. The family is a long way from a stable life.  There is still so much need, but at least they have some little bit of income and someone to watch over them.  And Mama Penny needs a new solar lamp.

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened." -- The Buddha

The following is an excerpt from "Green Goddesses: Going Global" feature story in the April 2012 Malaysian edition of Marie Claire magazine highlighting the work of Solar Sister and our very own "Green Goddess" Neha Misra, Solar Sister's Chief Collaboration Officer.  Full article is attached.

GREEN GODDESSES: GOING GLOBAL

Whether it's harnessing renewable energy or aiding wild animals in their natural habitat, women around the world are playing formidable roles in green industries. Read on and be inspired. 

Neha Misra, Chief Collaboration Officer at Solar Sister, Washington D.C.

Let there be light, indeed - such is the basis of Solar Sister's bold vision of a global women-driven, clean energy revolution. A social enterprise that provides women in East Africa with training and support to create solar micro-businesses, it partners the benefits of sustainable energy with that of empowering and educating women - female entrepreneurs and consumers.

As an experienced energy economist, Neha works towards building public, private and people partnerships across a diverse set of stakeholders, including solar technology partners, implementation partners, impact investors, government agencies, local leaders and committed individuals from around the world, in order to expand Solar Sister's network of entrepreneurs and improve energy access for millions.

"Over 1.6 billion people - a quarter of humanity - does not have basic access to electricity, not even a single light bulb! Those without electricity access rely on expensive, insufficient, hazardous and unhealthy kerosene lanterns and candles for light.

Energy poverty has a female face: 70 percent of these are women and girls, a large proportion of them in rural parts across the developing world. This is a number to be concerned about since electricity access is linked to every aspect of development, be it better economic growth, improved education, public health or saving the environment. How can we achieve global peace and prosperity if so many people live in darkness?

What attracted me to Solar Sister was its simple yet powerful approach to address the critical issue of energy poverty and its gender dimension, by presenting a grassroots, gender-inclusive and market-based model to provide clean energy in rural Africa, where nearly 600 million people live without electricity. It marries women power with solar power in a way that is both sustainable and scalable across Africa and other parts of the developing world affected by extreme energy poverty.

Today, 132 Solar Sister entrepreneurs ins Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan are bringing the benefits of life-transforming solar solutions to over 17,000 people in East Africa. We have proven that our model works - that starting with a micro-consignment inventory investment, a self-funding entrepreneur can be set to spread the benefits of solar light via our direct selling model.

We provide African women with a 'business in a bag'; a start-up kit of a variety of clean energy products, along with the training and marketing support to launch their own micro-solar businesses. The products in the bag include portable solar lights, mobile phone chargers and radio battery chargers. Solar Sister entrepreneurs sell on consignment, which means they pay for the inventory after they sell it, earning a commission on each sale.

The real impact of this opportunity in their lives lies in their personal stories: for example, Zuura Muhindo is a health worker, single mother of two little girls and a nursing student who somehow finds time to also be a Solar Sister. She is passionate about the need for light among the health care workers, especially the midwives, and has detailed the difficulty of sewing up an episiotomy in the dark after a difficult delivery. She uses the income from selling lamps to put herself through nursing school because her income as a certified nurse will be substantially better than as a healthcare worker.

We have found women in Africa are eager for the Solar Sister business opportuity that brings them improved income, cleaner and brighter light and confidence that comes from being in charge of your own destiny. Investing in women is not only the right thing to to, it is the smart thing to do. We've come a long way since Solar Sister was born in early 2010, but the audacity of our vision for a green economy inclusive of women power worldwide means that we have miles to go."

Other featured "Green Goddesses" are: Tara St. James, owner and head designer of sustainable fashion label Study, New York City; Dr. Yolanda Pretorius, coordinator and ecologist at Eco-SUSTain Africa (ESUSTA), Limpop; and, Molly Rockamann, Founding Director of EarthDance Farms, Missouri.

I am happy to share this positive story from Gulu, which has been getting too much negative press lately. 

Solar Sister is here to tell you that the area is thriving with activity: students, markets, new shops and businesses.  You can get a latte at the coffee shop on the main street and power up your computer at the internet cafe.  We are happy to be part of this thriving area.  Juliet, our Regional Coordinator based in Gulu is building one of our most successful networks of Solar Sister Entrepreneurs as all of that activity needs light.  The people of Gulu have hopes and aspirations to rebuild their lives. 

Aspiration is not patient. People are not waiting for when or if the electrical grid will be built in before they get to work.  And the good news is, they don't have to wait. Solar technology is available, affordable, appropriate and, as you will see, durable.  Our job is to create awareness and access to the clean energy technologies that can power prosperity. Product awareness is key to marketing, and there is no better marketing strategy than customer satisfaction.  Juliet writes:

"While in Kitgum last week; Sara, one of our entrepreneurs told me this story. A group of students traveling back from Gulu to Kitgum in a Toyota Ipsum had a flat tyre on the road. It was after 7pm and one of them had the d.light S1 reader which he placed on top of the car to give them light as they changed tyres.

Once the tyre change was complete they forgot the light on top of the car and drove off!! The light toppled down and was run over.

On retrieving it, the stand was completely flattened; the light had dust particles pressed into it. But guess what; it didn´t break and it was still lighting; is still lighting. Needless to say all 4 other occupants of the car ordered for their own immediately. They are spreading the news."

the d.light Design S1 Reader - a portable...and durable solar light

-- Reported by Juliet, Solar Sister Regional Coordinator for northern Uganda.  If you are interested in finding a Solar Sister Entrepreneur near you so you can buy your very own solar light, visit http://www.solarsister.org/about-us/contact-us/

Today is International Women’s Day - a celebration of women and a reaffirmation of the quest for breaking the glass ceiling when it comes to women’s economic, political and social well being. A celebration of the young unborn girl child who has a right to live as much as her male counterpart, a young teenage mother who has a right to good health and a life of dignity, a working mother of two who does a double shift at work and home to make sure all the wheels of family keep moving smoothly, of an old woman who might not be able to see as clearly now though she has seen much in life, of women in places high, low and everything in between, of women in their multitude of avatars ( forms ) of first human beings striving for fulfillment and their roles as daughters, mothers, sisters, wives that they walk into.

At Solar Sister, this day is also about night and light. How? Night - as we think about millions of women around the world whose lives are engulfed by darkness as the sun sets in. More than 70% of 1.6 billion people on planet without access to modern electricity in as much a single light bulb. Women for whom darkness is both literal and figurative as life comes to a standstill as the sky above becomes dark. Women for whom night means smoke of kerosene and firewood. Women for whom night is not storytelling time for their kids but fear that a makeshift kerosene lamp could injure their child. Women who live life in anonymity. Women who are still waiting for light.

And there IS light. For Solar Sister exists because this International Women’s day is also about light, hope and opportunity that our vision stands for. It is about women becoming torchbearers of a grassroots green economy - bringing cutting edge affordable and durable portable solar lights that they - yes, they too can afford and sell to their communities. This day is about Solar Sister Zuura who has been able to pay her nursing degree fees with commissions from her Solar Sister business in a bag, it is about Solar Sister Rev.Janet Akurut, one of our most energizing advocates, it is about Solar Sister’s customer Mama Norah, a diabetic patient who now feels safer with her solar charged cell phone in case there be an emergency, it is about Evelyn Namara, Solar Sister’s smart and sassy Program Coordinator in Uganda who inspires us every day with her commitment and energy, it is about every single man and woman who helps us dream a brighter world. And last but not the least, to me this International Women’s Day is also about my very dear friend and mentor Katherine Lucey, Founder and CEO of Solar Sister who started this beautiful chain of light and who reinforces my firm belief that to be someone’s light, however small, is a life well lived.

So this is dedicated to the entire Solar Sister family and all the other countless women who make our world brighter every day and night. A very happy International Women’s Day from this Solar Sister!

To be a light

"When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?" Pam Brown, Australian poet

The strength of Solar Sister is in the "sisterhood", the women entrepreneurs, our staff, our many supporters, who have come together to bring light, hope and opportunity to communities living without access to electricity. 

Time and again I hear from the women who have become Solar Sister Entrepreneurs that they are proud to belong to Solar Sister, they are strengthened by the opportunity to earn income and bring light to their communities.   There is a sense of togetherness and belonging that is as important as the income and light.  Standing together, the women are able to support each other and accomplish so much more than they could on their own.

The image of women gathering together to share stories is as old as time.  "Back fence chats" is what my grandmother used to call them.  Gathering with a neighbor and friend to share the day's news, offer advice, seek consolation. It forms a powerful network of news and information sharing. My grandfather would joke that he wouldn't need to subscribe to the newspaper, he just needed to hang out with the women at the back fence to find out the news of the day. 

It is this network that Solar Sister taps into to form the backbone of our Entrepreneur network.  Women sharing news and information with each other based on personal experience. It is a powerful marketing strategy. But it has become so much more than that. Because the women gain so much from it and then go on to share their new strength with other women.  And the information that they share is also valuable to the designers and manufacturers of the clean energy products. This 'customer feedback' is an important step in product design and service improvement.  By creating a communication network that captures that information, and shares it Solar Sister is providing a key service.

Communication is at the heart of the network.  The women communicate through  "back fence chats", in gatherings at Church or women's groups, as they work side by side in the garden or walking to town, and in more modern ways, using mobile phones to talk, to text, and computers to send emails or connect on facebook.  Our entire team has joined twitter and we have a facebook group that allows the Coordinators to share stories of success and provide support to each other.  The modern day "back fence chat".
 
This letter from Florence, a Solar Sister Entrepreneur in Buwama, Uganda that was sent by email to Mary, our Regional Coordinator for the Central Region makes me smile. Florence is so proud to be a Solar Sister, is such an eloquent communicator, and is eager to expand her business so she can help even more people in her community.  In this letter, Florence is giving feedback on a mobile phone charging system that she is testing for Jon at Rise Solar.  Notice the suggestion that a larger system that provides power for many families on a pay-as-you-go basis would be nice.  I don't think Florence has been reading the latest issues of FastCompany, but mini-grids and pay-as-you-go systems are indeed on the horizon. She is the kind of local advocate that any supplier should hope for.

"Our sisters hold up our mirrors:  our images of who we are and of who we can dare to be." ~ Elizabeth Fishel, American author 

-- Katherine Lucey, you can follow on twitter @Solar_Sister

In 2000, 189 nations made a promise to free people from basic forms of injustice and inequality in our world: extreme poverty, illiteracy and ill health. This pledge became the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) to be achieved by 2015. Health is at the heart of the MDG’s with three goals related directly to health: reduce child mortality, improve material health and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases). Health is also linked with the achievement of all the other goals, especially eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, universal education, and gender equality.

A key ingredient of achieving these health goals will have to be reliable access to clean energy. This has two dimensions: First, displacing the use and consequences of unhealthy fuels like kerosene and fuel wood that I have written about in my earlier blog pieces in this series. Second, reliable clean energy supply is vital for health care providers to help them focus on their job of improving health of the poor. It is this second dimension that I want to speak to you about now. For without energy, how can hospitals and clinics ensure refrigeration of critical vaccines and sterilization of equipment? How can important medical procedures like delivery of babies be carried out in the dark? How can simple medical records be digitized for faster and more efficient service? How can public health messages to prevent deadly diseases be spread on radio and television?

Good news is that we have a growing number of innovative organizations and individuals around the world, who are working hard to raise awareness on this important connection between health and energy. For example, Solar Sister Zuura in Uganda is also pursuing a Bachelors of Nursing degree. Zuura talks about the need of light for night and evening shifts in health clinics while putting up IV fluids and emergency blood transfusions. She is proud to be a Solar Sister Entrepreneur because not only can she earn a living now, but help her bring light which can save many lives in her community.

Another inspiring story is that of Solar Sister’s friend Dr. Laura Stachel, Co-Founder & Executive Director at WE CARE Solar. In 2008, Dr.Stachel went to Northern Nigeria to study ways to lower maternal mortality in state hospitals. She witnessed deplorable conditions in state facilities including sporadic electricity that impaired maternity and surgical care. Without a reliable source of electricity, nighttime deliveries were attended in near darkness, cesarean sections were cancelled or conducted by flashlight, and critically ill patients waited hours or days for life-saving procedures. The outcomes were often tragic. Moved by this critical need, she wrote to her husband Hal Aronson, a solar energy educator back in Berkeley, California. Together, Laura and Hal co-founded WE CARE Solar to improve maternal health outcomes in regions without reliable electricity which designs portable, cost-effective solar suitcases that power critical lighting, mobile communication devices and medical devices in low resource areas without reliable electricity.

If we can support many more women like Solar Sister Zuura and Dr. Laura Stachel around the world, no more lives would be lost for the lack of light. The UN has announced 2012 as the International Sustainable Energy for All Year. As part of the initiative, the United Nations Foundation has launched a new global Energy Access Practitioner Network to mobilize execution. You can also make a difference by understanding and increasing awareness on this important issue of energy and health.

--  Originally posted on Climate Conversations blog of the United States Department of State as the fourth of a four part series. Guest post written by Neha Misra, the Chief Collaboration Officer of Solar Sister.  You can follow her on Twitter at @LightSolar.