We’ll Leave the Light on for You

Tom Bodett was working as a radio host for NPR’s All Things Considered show when an advertising agency thought he sounded like someone who would stay at a Motel 6. They hired Tom to record a commercial for them and he ad-libbed the famous line, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

Most of us in the United States know what the tag line means, but to 50 million Africans (seven out of ten) who do not have electricity, they would probably not understand it. When I saw the plea on www.one.org (ONE) to help Africans get power for the first time, it resonated with me.

In my previous position with a higher education nonprofit, I helped the academic departments raise money for student projects. In 2010, Professor Dr. Slobodan Petrovic told me about Solar Hope. It is a nonprofit that he established to bring renewable energy to underdeveloped regions of the world by installing an incredible amount of renewable energy power in Africa by the year 2020. He took the first group of students to Tanzania in 2010.

According to the ONE website, energy access has enormous implications for basic quality of life, such as the ability of a pregnant woman facing a difficult labor in the middle of the night to be treated at a hospital with lights and functioning equipment. It provides refrigeration for childhood vaccines, allows students to study after dark and lights street lamps that help make it safer for girls to walk to school in the early morning hours. It is essential for irrigating crops, powering up small businesses, and creating jobs.

During their first trip to Africa, the students and Dr. Petrovic installed donated solar panels in a small village that had never had power before. Many villagers owned cell phones, but they had to walk 20 to 30 miles to the nearest village to recharge them. The students spent several weeks working among the villagers and bonding with them. The students had their lives changed as much by the experience, as the villagers did by getting power for the first time.

To celebrate the last night in the village, the students showed a movie that they had brought with them from home. There was sheer amazement on the faces of villagers as they watched their very first movie ever.

The ONE website describes a bill that is in the House of Representatives designed to bring electricity to 50 million Africans for the first time. It provides $7 billion from the government and is matched with $9 billion from the private sector. As of today, they have 97,894 signatures of their 100,000 goal to support passage of the bill.

For today’s gift, I added my name to the petition to let our representatives know that it’s time to electrify Africa. And then they won’t need Tom Bodett to leave the light on for them, they can do it themselves.

In Giving,

Robin