SoLight Design
The future of providing aid to impoverished populations is now bright with Solight Design, a company that makes sustainable home lighting products. Their most popular product, the SolarPuff, is reshaping people’s mindsets about the future of providing light to those in need.
Alice Min Soo Chun, the founder and CEO of Solight Design, invented the SolarPuff after being inspired by the designs of origami. The SolarPuff is a foldable solar-powered light that lies flat when compact. Inside, there is a solar panel, a lithium ion battery, LED bulbs, and a polyethylene terephthalate material that helps to inflate the cube. This material, called PET material for short, is recyclable and non-toxic.
The SolarPuff is ideal for anyone in need of light around the world due to the fact that it can provide up to 8 hours of light on the high setting after being charged in sunlight for 5 hours. It is able to provide enough light – 90 lumens, to be exact – to help people accomplish small tasks such as chores and reading a book.
On Solight Design’s website, their mission statement is to “provide lights to those who need them most. There are over 1.6 billion people who have no access to electricity and clean sustainable lighting, something most of us take for granted.” They donate 10% of online sales to supply lights around the world through NGO partners. Some of these partners include organizations that provide light to orphans in Haiti, refugees in Syria, and villagers in the Cameroon rainforest.
Another country that received the gift of light from SolarPuffs in 2016 was Greece. In a mostly Muslim refugee camp near Mt. Olympus, numerous families live in tents after escaping genocide in Iraq. In August of 2014, an Isis-led massacre left 5,000 men dead and 3,000 women captured as sex slaves.
Although the people living in this camp have dark stories, they now have physical light by which to see in a place without electricity. The SoLight team delivered 1,000 SolarPuffs to excited refugees.
As the SoLight Design Company continues to spread love around the world with the gift of light, they welcome any help they can get in distributing SolarPuffs to those in need. Donating is made easy on the SoLight Design website where you can choose to help send light to Nepal, Haiti, Syria, Ghana, Senegal, Ecuador, Cameroon, Liberia, or a new place that is special to you. All tax-deductible donations are made to FAARM, a 501(c)(3) organization.