Let There Be Light International

A new mother cares for her child with her new solar light thanks to LTBLI's maternal and infant health project, Safe Births + Healthy Homes. More than 13,000 mother/baby pairs have now benefitted from this program. 1.3 million people have been impacted by all of our solar safety net projects over the past 10 years! Shine On!

We did it! We not only hit but we surpassed our One Million Lives Impacted mark in mid-2022. How brilliant is that? At the close of 2022, thanks to your support, 1,120,000 lives have been brightened. Wow! Over the past 9 years, Let There Be Light International (LTBLI) has implemented 230 solar projects in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda in partnership with 12 grassroots organizations embedded in their communities. Thousands of patients every month visit 79 rural health clinics solar-electrified by Let There Be Light International! In 2022, 6,600 students, elders, parents, and people living with disabilities received safe solar lights, impacting an additional 35,600 people! And, 5,000 mother/infant pairs have received solar lights through our maternal and infant health project, Safe Births + Healthy Homes (SB+HH). Follow us on social media and in our newsletters to hear about our efforts to scale up our Lights 4 Literacy project thanks to a volunteer team from UPenn's Wharton Global Impact Consulting group. And, in July 2023, we will again participate in the High-Level Political Forum at the United Nations with the UN NGO Major Group as an expert on SDG7 (energy).

Muyinayina is the 54th Health Clinic to receive a solar-electrification system from Let There Be Light International in off-grid Uganda since 2014. More than 730,000 people now benefit from improved healthcare access and delivery in their communities! 600 million people in Africa live without access to electricity. When the sun goes down, businesses close, streets grow dark, and homes are lit with dirty, dangerous and expensive kerosene lamps which are responsible for high rates of childhood burns, respiratory infections, poisonings, and house fires. Let There Be Light International wants to change that.

Tereza, a 28-year-old mother of three, lives in a small village outside of Kikonda, in central Uganda. She and her neighbors gather in the shade of her jackfruit tree. She is joyful, warm, and laughs freely. Her youngest is a baby girl named Marjorie. Her two other girls attend school but occasionally have to skip a week or two when the family struggles to keep up with school fees. Tereza is grateful for the solar light she received at the Kikonda Health Clinic through Let There Be Light International’s Safe Births + Healthy Homes program. With the money she now saves on battery operated lights – amounting to 25% of her household budget – she recently bought a pig, which she proudly points to as it grazes through her garden. The solar light and the pig are clearly hers. While her husband used to make most financial decisions, Tereza’s ownership of the light, and now the pig, has given her more authority. Without hesitation, she laughs and declares, “the light is mine.” Her husband, who sits nearby, nods, shrugs in surrender, and joins in her laughter. With her newfound agency and the savings from her solar light, Tereza opened a little soda shop that she operates out of her home. In the evenings, after completing the farm work and household chores, she sells beverages to her neighbors. Inspired by the savings from her solar light, she purchased a larger solar system, which powers both a porch light and a stereo — a luxury among the subsistence farming community she lives in. She is now able stay open an additional three hours each night, and, her customers who have solar lights can frequent her store after dark without fear. Together, the sound of the stereo and Tereza’s laugh welcome customers from afar. In recent months, Tereza and her husband have begun working on their next project: rebuilding their home. Today, they live in a simple one-room structure built out of mud. With the new funds from her business, they are slowly building a new brick structure next door. In the meantime, Tereza’s home has already become a gathering place and a symbol of progress in their community.

Agnes lives in a thatched roof and mud hut in Uganda with her 15-month-old son, Rajab, and 5 other children. Agnes used to have a small kerosene light, but sometimes her children were burned, and the soot from the burning fuel irritated their eyes and lungs. The children also struggled to do homework with the dirty and dangerous light. Now, they all use the safe solar light donated by Let There Be Light International, which gives them hours of clean light every night. She is also saving money which she uses for school fees and supplies. “The children now are safe. Thank You!"