His first social project, Pier One, was designed to help sailors between contracts get a bed close to the harbor, in an area of Manila were the housing crisis was particular harsh, and decent accommodation for reasonable budget, scarce. With a dormitory gathering 40 beds at the beginning, the project is still alive and now offers over 1, beds.
This proof of concept gave birth to the Centro Migrante initiative, which teaches sailors between contracts how to build their own home.
Illac quickly became renowned worldwide for his action in social entrepreneurship. He gained support from MIT and Harvard to improve his projects, before founding Myshelter Foundation in , the organization operating Liter of Light today. Liter of Light was born from an original idea by Alfredo Moser in , and consists of giving plastic bottles full of water and bleach to prevent algae from growing in the water to households and schools in areas without access to electricity.
This method can also be of use in areas where the regular network is faulty, or where being connected to the grid is simply too expensive. One bottle is inserted into a whole made in the roof of the house, and provides the equivalent of a Watt bulb during the day, with the sunlight refracting through the water in the bottle and into the house. But what happens during nighttime when kerosene lamps or candles have to be used, with at times dangerous consequences such as fires, of health hazards?
In Rizal, most men leave the village during the week to work in the neighboring hills in order to make coal from cutting trees or to grow vegetables. Women stay home and take care of the household, while kids go to school and help their parents during the weekend. Their life has changed since Liter of Light has installed the solar lamps in the past months. Those are complemented by 50 streetlights for the streets of the village.
They were very happy when we first arrived because their neighbourhood got brighter. The knowledge would already be in the community and we would just help consolidate it all.
A Liter of Light creates sustainable solutions ahead of the storm, working to address the damage wrought by natural disasters before it occurs. The project empowers residents of the affected areas with the necessary skills to adapt to dire circumstances, thereby minimising their dependence on humanitarian aid.
Active in over 20 countries, A Liter of Light has provided more than , solar bottle bulbs to families all over the world, enriching their lives with a device as effective as its design is simple. We deal with it a bottle at a time. Phillip Gangan is a writer based in the Netherlands. He writes about design and entrepreneurship, and for this story he returned to his former home town Manila, Philippines. Sign In.
Email us directly! Works That Work, No. A Litre at a Time by Phillip Gangan words The Liter of Light project brings affordable, sustainable solar light to areas beyond the reach of the power grid. The Liter of Light solar bulb is made of a plastic bottle, water, a tablespoon of bleach to prevent mould and a drop of glue. It provides light to 28, homes in Metro Manila alone and can be found in countries from Argentina to Zambia.
Liter of Light is a global open source movement, developed by Alfredo Moser of Brazil in , aiming to provide affordable and sustainable light to places where electricity is not available. Kurt Alvarez is a photographer based in Manila, Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan, which struck in November , one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, destroyed 14 million houses and pushed millions of people into further poverty.
The project has been helping the rehabilitation of areas affected by the typhoon by providing training and solar bottle nightlight kits for homes and streets to local partners and grassroots entrepreneurs. Using recycled plastic bottles, 10 ml of bleach and distilled water, the bottle is placed through galvanised steel roofs. Sunlight refracts through the bottle to light the space below with watt of brightness.
With a simple circuit panel, drill and soldering, the night solar LED light is built and inserted into the already installed bulb. The water bottles are covered with handcrafted woven shades, providing a new outlet for local basket-weaving skills, which are otherwise no longer in demand. Replication is done by equipping local partners or grassroots entrepreneurs with basic tools to build and install daylight bottle bulbs, and teaching them to build solar nightlight upgrades through purchasing kits from MSF or by sourcing other parts locally.
Step-by-step guides on materials and installation are available online through video tutorials and social media in order to facilitate use and replication of the technology. Roche, Inc. This came from the sale of finished lights or kits sold to other NGOs where MSF provided training on how to make lights. Liter of Light began with one carpenter, one solar bottle bulb and one paid installation in one home in Within months, the project had completed 15, solar bottle bulb installations in 20 cities around the Philippines and had begun to inspire local initiatives around the world.
To date, more than , installations in cities in the Philippines have been completed. The simple lighting technology creates local jobs, teaches green skills and empowers local communities. This allows them to have more disposable income to pay for critical needs. Liter of Light is uplifting the quality of life of thousands of impoverished families in the Philippines who have no access to electricity and use dangerous kerosene lamps indoors, which provide poor light, pollute and cause respiratory problems and fires.
With the solar bottle bulbs, residents do their chores and activities efficiently inside a brighter home. Having affordable lighting not only improves the living environment of urban and rural poor families but also allows children to do homework and read at home.
Due to high electricity prices, local government officials could not afford to light up their streets. In partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority TESDA , a government entity that trains young people and workers, the project has trained volunteers, mostly women and disabled people and a number of local government units and non-profit organisations in building solar streetlights and houselights.
Through social media and easy replication, the movement has spread to more than , households in the Philippines and inspired local initiatives around the world lighting up , homes in over 15 countries. The project has been replicated in 15 countries Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia via partnerships with social enterprises that raise their own funds to run the project in their respective areas.
Each country in which the project operates has developed its operations and programming at a local level but shares technical knowledge, conducts troubleshooting and crowd-sources innovations to the technology through regular coordination calls, skype, emails and social media. The materials used are readily available, e. Discarded plastic 1.
With a bit of bleach to prevent mould and just enough distilled water to fill the bottle, the solar bottle daylight bulb produces 55 watts of brightness through sun refraction and will last up to five years before being replaced. Each daylight bulb saves kilos of carbon emissions a year, and each nightlight bulb saves kilos in carbon emissions a year.
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