This summer the WakaWaka Foundation will donate 12.000 WakaWaka Lights to Haitians who are still suffering the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Even now, three years after the earthquake, 370.000 thousand Haitians live in complete darkness at night. Many families reside in semi-permanent refugee camps where they are dependent on dirty, toxic and dangerous kerosene lamps. The use of these lamps leads to frequent ‘camp fires’, wiping out whole sections of the camps with many casualties and severe burns.
This summer the WakaWaka Foundation will donate 12.000 WakaWaka Lights to Haitians who are still suffering the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Even now, three years after the earthquake, 370.000 thousand Haitians live in complete darkness at night. Many families reside in semi-permanent refugee camps where they are dependent on dirty, toxic and dangerous kerosene lamps. The use of these lamps leads to frequent ‘camp fires’, wiping out whole sections of the camps with many casualties and severe burns.
Read the entire article on the WakaWaka Foundation website
The 12.000 WakaWaka Lights were raised in the WakaWaka Power crowdfunding campaign. People who pre-oredered a WakaWaka Power also donated a Light to Haiti through the ‘Buy one, Give one’-principle. Off-Grid Solutions, the company behind the WakaWaka products, has donated the 12.000 WakaWaka Lights to the WakaWaka Foundation which is responsible for the proper distribution of the Lights via our 15 partner NGO’s on Haiti.
Last week, co-founder Maurits Groen and Director Special Projects Michiel van Kleef arrived in Haiti as representatives of the WakaWaka foundation with the first batch of Lights packed in their luggage. They could see firsthand which people received WakaWaka Lights and were directly involved in the distribution. Maurits explains the importance of this trip: “The WakaWaka Foundation is very concerned about the use of kerosene lamps. Not only for the environmental effects because of its pollution, but also because of direct safety issues. Kerosene lights cause a lot of skin burns and the fumes are very bad for your health, especially for kids that need to do homework with these lights. In the tented camps we again saw how common the use of kerosene lamps is. A lot should be done, but providing them with a safe and sustainable light solution is an important first step”.
Maurits and Michiel visited several projects and met with our partner organizations. They also donated WakaWaka Lights themselves to two villages and two schools. The first Lights were distributed in a village with a few newly built houses for former tent camp residents. Unfortunately, they are not connected to the energy grid and thus have no light. After a long drive the team arrived and witnessed a ceremonial village gathering, where Maurits demonstrated the Lights and handed them over to the community.
When asked how he would describe his trip to Haiti in one word, Michiel says it was ‘enriching’. “A trip to Haiti is certainly no holiday. There were many tough moments. Of course we know the images of tented camps on television. But the reality is much more intense. The heat, the stench, garbage everywhere, poverty all around, people living in marginal conditions. And that in broad daylight. Imaging the total darkness at nigh! The most instructive part of our trip was to experience what it really is, living in the dark. Being a witness to those kind of living conditions only strengthens your commitment to the WakaWaka cause.”
The Lights however were not donated ‘for nothing’. The WakaWaka Foundation strongly believes that with is free is without value. The aim is to donate all the WakaWaka Lights on Haiti according to the ‘free, but not for nothing’-principle. There are great benefits in requiring a service in return, because it not only makes the product more valuable, but also makes sure the whole community is affected. This can have all kinds of forms. Michiel: “We saw a lot of innovative ideas of Haitian communities to ‘compensate’ for the donation of the WakaWaka Lights. It varied from paying 2,5 dollar to pay collectively for a solar street lantern, building speed bumps, working on the road, collecting garbage.”.
The WakaWaka team visited several small new villages, built to house earthquake victims that lost family as well as their houses and often their work too. As most affected they were chosen by the stricken communities themselves to be the first to be relocated. But even these (mostly with their own labor) newly built houses are not connected to the grid –and probably never will. The WakaWaka solar LED lamp is a real ‘completion’ to these houses.
‘WakaWaka’ also visited a school, with even young children happily walking for 2,5 hours vice versa to ‘enjoy’ good school education –and from now on being able to do their homework after sunset. It will enhance their chances for a good job too. Haiti needs well-trained people. WakaWakaLight will enable them to educate themselves for that.
Together with NGO IOM, the WakaWaka team also visited the camp Acra, which accommodates over 15.000 people for already three years now. A visit to the very poor Cite Soleil area that houses 100.000 people had to be canceled, but the WakaWakaLights will certainly be distributed there as well.
Besides the visits to communities and NGO’s, some important talks were held with commercial partners like phone service provider Digicel, and with the Haitian Minister of Minister of Energy, which even resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding. Maurits: “We had a week full of impressive impressions in Haiti. It made us realize again that WakaWaka will change lives. Because the Lights will be distributed in so many different places, the effect will spread. It will spill over, we hope and think, to others that will see the all the advantages of them. A light spill, that -unlike oil spills- brings benefits in stead of harm.”