If you want to make a tax deductible donation and provide improved lighting please visit WWW.DLIGHTDESIGN.ORG. 

We will be improving the website over the next week to make the donation process easier but I wanted to blog about d.light.ORG because many of our families and friends want to donate during the holidays.  In fact, on Friday, the donations from a generous foundation will provide several hundred Dalit families in Karataka with improved lighting!  I am looking forward to visiting those families in 2008 to witness the impact lights are having on their lives.

Dlightdesign.org came about after I visited REDS twice during my trips to India.  I wrote about one trip to the Dalit community in an earlier blog.  I visited families their who are living by the light of little whisky bottles they fill with kerosene, and I heard stories about how they would wake up in the morning and wipe black soot off their faces where the carbon would settle from the lanterns they left burning dimly at night.  Their children can't study at night easily, and the kerosene costs a significant fraction of their total income, especially for the families who were living under plastic tarps or grass huts.  We at d.light were determined to help REDS deliver improved lighting to the most needy families they worked with.

Meanwhile, I was familiar with One World's Children Fund (OWCF) and the terrific work they have done championing projects overseas and allowing US donors to provide tax deductible assitance to international projects.  It has truly been a pleasure to work with the inspirational founders and staff at both REDS and OWCF.  

Meanwhile, we are very proud to provide solar lighting to these families in Karnataka.  Erica is just back from 20 days visiting families in UP who were using our lights.  She observed first hand that their children are studying on average 1.5 hours per night with our lights, a huge improvement, and both farmers and tailors told her they are saving up to 25Rs a week (over 50cents/week) using the lights to water their fields, tend to buffalos and other animals, and sow crops.  Finally, women are using the lights both to prepare meals in the morning and at nighttime, and the family usually eats and socializes by the d.light.  All the families she met wanted to buy a 2nd light which is great!

Something that's less important to the families, but very important to d.light and many donors, is that each solar lantern not only provides a huge increase in standard of living, but also dramatically reduces carbon emissions which would otherwise be emitted by the dim but polluting kerosene lanterns.  Therefore, donating solar lanterns also plays a needed role in reducing global warming.

Please do spread the word and donate a light for a family by visiting www.dlightdesign.org! 

I’m wrapping up my first trip to China and I absolutely love it (and yes Chinese food in China is 10 million times better than in the US).  Any social entrepreneur designing and selling consumer goods MUST spend time in China.  On this trip, I realized the enormous value of the relationships we have built here over the last 8 months, and I have to thank Xian, one of d.light’s founders, because without him to communicate in mandarin we would be cooked.  For example, yesterday I was brought cold tea with dinner.  I tried to communicate that I wanted hot tea for 5 minutes with every possible charades trick, and eventually they understood and nodded, and then brought me a glass of crushed ice intended to make my tea colder.  Now try to manufacture a product!  Thanks Xian.

Nevertheless, this translation gap isn’t stopping business.  Somebody told me earlier this year that the GDP of Shenzhen, which manufactures about 70% (?) of the world’s electronics, is greater than India’s.  Indeed, I was fully expecting to see really big factories.  However, nothing would have prepared me for the reality.  Over the last week, I have literally driven for 1 hour on the highway in every direction from my hotel and both sides of the road were lined 6 stories high with factories.  The factories stretch as far as I could see through the dense pollution (I haven’t stopped coughing since I got here either).  China is not messing around with factories.  When I visited suppliers, each building actually houses multiple factories.   One factory only owned two of the six floors, and when I asked how many items they were making, they said 800,000 per day.  Holy smokes!  Then they said they were just a small operation and there were 100 bigger competitors and besides they could barely compete with all the families who just scrunch together an easily available machine and start making LEDs in their houses.  This place is mind blowing.

On the personal side, I am realizing more and more that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.  I love it – BUT - my life is a total mess.  I am transitioning to India in early January, and 2 days before this China trip I had to pack up all my belongings which were scattered in 3 storage areas.  Meanwhile, I can’t rent a place easily on a month-2-month basis and I am living off the wonderfully kind generosity of friends like Janet and Wylie and others who have been so supportive of d.light (this really is the best part of starting a social enterprise – people rally around to make the impossible possible).  The process of moving is killer, but the end result feels great because I can now pack all my worldly possessions into a Subaru outback!  I’m almost footloose and fancy free!  The much harder part is separating myself from people I love in pursuit of a social career.  Having been a foreign service child, it’s one thing to move around with my family.  It’s quite another to say goodbye to my friends, family, girlfriend etc not knowing really when I will next spend good quality time together.  When people ask how long I’m going to India for I say, ‘3 months, 6mo, 9mo, 5 years!, who knows.”  Meanwhile, the thought of moving back to India, this time without any logistical or support services from USAID or any corporate entity is intimidating and exhilarating.  As one of my mentors said, ‘India is NOT an easy place to live,’ and I don’t particularly want to spend my time in the ex-patriot scenes.  Instead, I want to dive into the world of rural Indian retail, distribution, shipping, and get my hands dirty.  I guess that will mean I’ll have to start learning Hindi as well and re-develop an iron stomach and some serious negotiation skills.  I am up for the challenge.

Last week I received a report from a friend in India, who was looking at the impacts of a two year old solar LED project in Rajasthan.  An exerpt is below:

"3.2 (a) Education
By and the large, the most significant improvement experienced from the solar lighting systems has been the enhancement of educational opportunities for children. All households with school-going children cite a strong increase both in the amount of time
children study each night, and in the children’s educational achievement. Children now study for an average of 1.5 hours each night, from essentially having not studied at home at

As stated by Mr. Sharma, the village schoolteacher, quantifying the increase in educational achievement is impossible, as it is so dramatic that his curriculum has become significantly more advanced as a result. Currently, scores of 60 percent on exams earn a
passing grade. According to Mr. Sharma, if he had administered these same exams previously, not a single student would have passed. At that time, he says, few students would retain much knowledge from one day to the next. He now estimates that on a daily basis, students retain an average of 70% of what was taught the day before, because of the present ability to do homework exercises in the evening."


Meanwhile, we are also starting to see some of the income generating benefits we expressed to investors several months ago.  The recent stories from our customers in India are about tailors using our lights to work at night.  They can't do the work by kerosene because they can't see with enough detail, and they can't afford to run the big hurricane lamps, however ours work perfectly.  Everybody is anxious to see the units hit the store shelves!

And the real music to my ears is that all the neighbors of the original adopters are starting to inquire where they can get them.