Education

65% of schools in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lack access to energy. This means – no lights, no computers, no communications.

What’s more, hundreds of millions of school children in Africa live in homes without basic electricity. This means kids are unable to study at night, are less likely to stay in school, graduate, and get jobs that can help pull their families out of poverty. Especially girls. 

Photo credits: AAIDRO/Brown Pix

Little Sun provides solar lamps to children in areas without electricity. Each lamp lights 1,200 additional hours of study time for students and saves families $250 in household expenses over the lifespan of the lamp, while making children’s homes healthier and less dangerous. We also make solar phone chargers available to educators so they can access educational content. And we work with ministries of education and local partners to make energy accessible in rural schools. Our current education programs include:

Power to read

Little Sun works with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and local organizations. In 2021 we are distributing 500,000 solar lamps to students and 5,000 solar phone chargers to teachers in remote parts of Ethiopia. But this supplies solar lamps to a fraction of the over 20 million school children in the country. And so we also run educational workshops about solar energy, seeding the vision that renewable energy can power and empower their lives.

Solar Schools

We work in other countries as well, to provide solar lamps to school children through our Solar Schools program. We distribute lamps and phone chargers in close coordination with partners and run workshops for teachers and children. We have worked in Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa. In Ethiopia, we are adding further opportunities – for example providing solar water pumps for tap water for school children.

Solar Science

Since the very start, telling the story of the power of solar has been part of our work. We lead workshops and learning events for children using our solar lamps as teaching tools. And our solar events have inspired audiences around the world as people join us to celebrate the power of the sun.

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Two school kids studying in the dark with a Little Sun solar lamp
Kids at a school in Sub-Saharan Africa with Little Sun solar lamps
School kids wearing a Little Sun solar lamp
Massai community of women and kids with Little Sun solar lamps
A school boy studying with a Little Sun solar lamp