Founded in 2006, SolarAid is an international development charity that is working to combat poverty and climate change in Africa. Their mission is to create a sustainable market for solar lights in sub-Saharan Africa and eradicate the kerosene lamp. Through their social enterprise, SunnyMoney, SolarAid distributes and sells solar lights to people living without electricity in Zambia and Malawi.
Only 4 per cent of rural Malawi is connected to electricity. While cities across Africa have seen greater access to solar lighting, many rural communities across the continent are being left behind.
Energy poverty forces families, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings to use dangerous alternatives such as candles, homemade torches, and kerosene lamps. This is not only unsafe, but poses a serious health risk and is incredibly harmful to the environment, emitting huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
For many people living in these conditions, their only option to escape darkness is an open flame. In many cases, this can lead to terrible accidents. These methods of lighting their homes can also be expensive, further compounding the effects of energy poverty.
Children in rural Malawi struggle to study at night, while their teachers have difficulty preparing for school. The thick, toxic smoke released by unclean lighting methods leads to widespread health complications. Over 4 million people a year die from illnesses attributed to household air pollution.
In 2020, the Turner Kirk Trust provided a philanthropic gift of £75,000 to SolarAid to fund a brand-new pilot in Malawi to aid in the mission of lighting up all of rural Africa by 2030. The 12-month pilot project – named Light a Village – was launched in March 2021 to provide solar lights through SunnyMoney to every household in a single, off-grid village in central Malawi.
Since launching the project, SolarAid has successfully provided solar lighting systems to 500 homes in the village of Ntchisi. After a short period of free lighting, the village switched to a pay-as-you-go model, which provides energy at a much cheaper rate than unclean and hazardous lighting sources such as kerosene lamps.
Whilst implementing the pilot, SolarAid established strong regional partnerships with the Department of Energy and Local Chiefs. The District Education Manager has also provided a Teachers Development Centre, which will act as an operation centre at the pilot site.“We are very excited about seeing this new, innovative project coming to life. We are hoping this will give us a sustainable model we can develop and replicate as we are working towards our mission to light up every home, clinic, and school in Africa by 2030.”
In collaboration with The University of Glasgow, the project aims to develop the evidence needed to produce a transformative method for improving children’s ability across STEM subjects, independent of background or birth.
In partnership with Imperial College London, the Turner Kirk Trust Sprint Challenge was established to bring together conservation scientists and mathematicians from Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy, Department of Life Sciences, and Department of Mathematics.
A child protection programme that aims to develop a replicable model for preventing harmful institutionalised care, in favour of family-based care.
The University of Cambridge and the Turner Kirk Trust have launched the Kirk Global Challenge, a competition designed to jump-start economic growth in the developing world.
A new global fellowship programme at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative to protect biodiversity and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
A new student-led research programme to develop new unmanned aerial vehicles to fight back against climate change and poaching, funded by the Trust.