Haller & Gravity Light

Haller has teamed up with Gravity Light Foundation to trial sustainable lighting in Haller communities. Gravity Light Foundation Commercial Director, Caroline Angus and Haller CEO Alia Malik met in London through social enterprise network, On Purpose. Haller projects in Kenya include a renewable energy component and methods have been trialled from biogas to solar charging stations. But Haller still had not found a durable low cost technology that would fit its communities.

In a pilot project organised by Haller Chief Operational Officer Gideon Amboga, GravityLight prototypes are currently in Haller households, providing sustainable lighting sources for our community members.

In the rural communities that Haller supports, families struggle to find a cheap, safe way to light their homes after dark. Many are forced to use kerosene lamps, made out of a tin and a wick, which are costly and dangerous. GravityLight does not need batteries or sunlight, costs nothing to run and produces a light over five times brighter than the typical open-wick kerosene lamp.  Jim Reeves, the technical brain behind GravityLight, told The Guardian that for people living off the grid the unit cost of power is thousands more than on the grid. Furthermore the World Bank estimates that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day.

Together, Gravity Light Foundation and Haller have installed the sustainable light source in three households in our community as a trial. A member of one of these households told The Guardian that the new light source has helped their lives in many ways the most important of which is that it allows the children to study at night thereby improving education levels in our communities. It has also made easier for the families to have dinner together in the evening. Pilot households have indicated that they would like to buy their own GravityLights.

We consider this pilot to be a promising success as it has the potential to help our communities on the financial, educational and social level. We hope to enable our community members to buy their own GravityLights.

You can see for yourself their findings in The Guardian film, “The weight of light, how gravity is illuminating Sub-Saharan Africa”, featuring our Haller community members and our very own James Jared Konde, narrating the experience of our communities in his orange Haller t-shirt