Freeplay Foundation
Tom Hanks and Kristine Pearson holding a Freeplay windup radio
Kristine Pearson with Tom Hanks, who knows the power of radio

Tackling Energy Poverty

Lifeline Energy Blog / Kristine Pearson

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Radio – My Most Trusted Friend

February 2, 2012

By Kristine Pearson in honour of World Radio Day

When I set-up Lifeline Energy (or Freeplay Foundation as it was known then) in January 1999 I was tasked with finding ways to get the first model hand-crank radios to rural Africans who didn’t have listening access. Although I had travelled widely across Africa, admittedly I was naïve when it came to radio. It didn’t take me long to appreciate the profound power and importance of radio in the lives of the poorest.

In early 1999 I received a hand-written airmail letter with beautiful Rwandan stamps addressed to ‘The Manager’ with this picture inside.  The author was a student intern working for an NGO in Rwanda.  She said that our wind-up radios, which had been donated by the British government, were greatly helping “child-headed households”. This was the first time I’d heard that term.  The 1994 genocide having orphaned an estimated one million children meant that an entire generation could grow up without a parent.  HIV/AIDS, which was largely unknown before the genocide, was rapidly becoming a pandemic in the Great Lakes region expedited by widespread raping of women, further orphaning children.

I later travelled to Rwanda, and with the aid of a local charity – Refugee Trust – spoke to groups of children who headed households and had received our radios. Some were as young as nine and mainly girls.  Nothing prepared me for this experience. The messages perpetrated by the now infamous Radio Mille Collines were well known, but those old enough never mentioned it.

The photo Kristine received

These children were the poorest of the poor.  Destitute, their only clothes were the ones on their backs. Most slept on the ground. Many were malnourished and didn’t feel well. All had experienced unimaginable trauma and had responsibilities that no child should ever have to bear.  How they coped at all, I don’t know.

The children told me that they listened to their radios from the time they woke up until they went to sleep, if they slept at all.  They said that they were afraid of the dark and worried about soldiers coming. The voices on the radio made them feel safe after dark. Nearly every child said that what they wanted to listen to most was the news. Given the instability in the region at that time, they wanted to know what was going on in Rwanda and in neighbouring Congo where a fresh conflict was underway.

Their impressions of the genocide and what happened seemed to depend on what side of the genocide that their parents were on. In either instance, they revealed that they didn’t trust the adults around them and felt exploited. They said that the radio was “their most trusted friend”. At that time their favorite stations were the Voice of America’s Great Lakes Service and the BBC World Service.  Both broadcast in the local language of Kinyarwanda.

In addition to the news, they needed basic, practical advice that a parent or trusted adult would provide about hygiene, health, nutrition, cooking, farming and livestock care.  A soap opera drama called Urunana had begun broadcasting which included an orphaned family in the story line. Many said that they never thought that they would be rich enough to own a radio or to even buy batteries. They could listen any time because our radios could be wound up on demand.

Children gathered in groups of up to 20 to listen and discuss what they heard, helping one another. Francine, 15, said that winding up the radio made her feel important and it was like having a ‘magic box’.

A child-headed family with their radio

Mukakarimba, a 14-year old head of household told me that her most important possession used to be her goat.  Now it was her radio. Jean Paul, 13, said that without his radio he would have not known to wash his hands before eating and that he had to boil water before drinking it. Eriminata, 16  and the head of a household of five younger siblings, said that her radio was her ‘lifeline’. The name stayed with us.

Over the years I’ve been to Rwanda 35 times and have spoken to hundreds of children who head households.  It was where the idea for the Lifeline radio, the first radio designed for children living on their own and distance education, was conceived. We’ve been responsible for the distribution of more than 16,000 solar and hand-powered radios in Rwanda reaching an estimated 300,000 listeners.

To those children who are poor and isolated, on-demand radio access is still their lifeline. Children cite Radio Rwanda and community stations as their favorites nowadays.  Rwanda’s radio waves are rich with programmes on farming, peace and reconciliation, livestock care, the environment and health.

Although the groups of listeners are smaller in Rwanda than in other programmes, such as those found in schools, the impact of radio is potent and positive. Children feel that they have information that they ‘own’ and that they can trust.

The challenges of growing up yourself while also trying to guide your siblings and provide them with life’s basic needs are incomprehensible. The most effective way that these children can consistently obtain the information they need to improve their situation, is via radio. We at Lifeline Energy recognise our responsibility to ensuring that these children have access to information and recommit ourselves to providing suitably powered radios to those who need them most.

Filed under: News,World Radio Day — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 3:00 pm
Kerosene, a burning issue in women’s rights, human rights

October 2, 2011

By Kristine Pearson
CEO, Lifeline Energy                                                                                                 This is a “blong” – a long blog.

Like many girls I’ve met in Africa, Rose’s dream is to become a teacher.  The shy grade six student revises her homework at a rickety table in a tin shack in a Nairobi slum. A kerosene lamp fashioned from a can of bug spray called a koroboi in Swahili, allows Rose to study for a mere 15 minutes a night.  The light is inefficient and dim.  The fumes are noxious; the smoke ‘scratches’ her eyes.

She says that in the morning she ‘spits up black’.  She hates kerosene not only because it stinks and makes her feel tired and ill, but because six years ago her younger brother tipped over a koroboi, catching the house on fire killing her mother, father and brother.  To 13-year-old Rose, kerosene is the smell of death.

Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common in Africa.  Exposure to kerosene retards economic progress,  poisons children, causes deadly fires, horrific burns and injuries, and even death.  This fuel is silently destroying the lives and livelihoods of countless women and children across Africa.

With an estimated 870 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, 85% have no access to electricity.  Much of the population straddles the equator where it gets dark at night and light in the morning around 6:30 each day.  In addition, many African houses are rough hewn from mud or aluminium and poorly ventilated. Seeing inside is difficult even in daytime.  Pit latrines are built away from houses and people don’t use them at night for fear of the dark, snakes or being attacked.  Of the options available for lighting – kerosene, candles, firewood and batteries – kerosene is the most common.  And because it’s for household use, it’s a woman’s fuel – and woman and children bear the brunt of energy poverty

Take, for example, Nyeri, a 32 year-old former teacher from Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.  Nyeri barely survived the fire that started when a koroboi’s flame caught her skirt. She was eight months pregnant.  Living in a rural area, it took hours for her to be transported to a hospital, which was ill-equipped to deal with life-threatening burns.  In agonizing pain, Nyeri prematurely gave birth to a boy who died.  She had no way to bond with or nurse the baby because burns covered half of her body.  Badly disfigured, when she was well enough to return home her husband divorced her, kept her children and banished her to her parent’s faraway homestead.  When Nyeri’s parents died she was plunged into destitution and now depends on handouts to survive.

Masquerading as a benign fuel

There are an estimated 1.4 billion people globally who live without reliable access to electricity, and an additional 1.2 billion who live with intermittent electricity.  Yet the problem remains largely unknown in developed and electrified areas of the world.  The average Westerner can likely describe water and food issues that the poor struggle with.  We worry ourselves if the water we drink and the food we eat is safe. The same can’t be said for energy. Electricity for us is a flip of a switch.  The life threatening and profoundly challenging energy issues that the poor deal with every day are largely consigned to the periphery.

Wikipedia portrays kerosene as a diverse and relatively harmless fuel, used mostly to power jet-engine aircraft and rockets.  Although it briefly glosses over the fact that ‘at one time’ it was widely used in lamps and lanterns, it woefully fails to illustrate the scale of its use in developing countries, as well the devastating impact the use of kerosene has already had. It is sold to you and me in a sealed bottle with ‘caution’ and ‘highly flammable liquid’ on the label.  Oil companies and African governments do little to help educate consumers to use it safely or warn of its perils.

To Africans, kerosene, or paraffin as it is called in some countries, is a necessary evil.  It’s sold informally in market stalls and is bought and stored in disused Coke, water or liquor bottles.  Women even buy it in flimsy plastic bags. 

In South Africa, based on national surveys and hospital records, between 1996 and 2001, it was estimated that 80,000 children ingested kerosene per year and 40,000 children developed chemical pneumonia from drinking it.  It is unknown how many children actually died, but in 2001, it was estimated to be 4,000.  I would imagine this number has been reduced given South Africa’s aggressive electricity drive over the past 10 years.  That said, what about the rest of sub-Saharan Africa that has nowhere near South Africa’s current 70% electrification, the highest rate on the continent.  The numbers could truly be staggering, but no one knows.  No one is counting.

Celestine, a 12-year-old girl in Rwanda told me that she swallowed kerosene a few years ago believing it to be clean water, something she’d never before seen.  Further, she said that she worries what internal harm was caused by the incident.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the accident may leave her with lifelong heart problems and respiratory ailments. She is lucky to be alive. Kerosene is a low-viscosity hydrocarbon and it is an aspiration hazard – which means that Celestine could have choked to death on the fluid itself or suffocated from the fumes emanating from her belly.  According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, drinking kerosene can cause chemical pneumonitis, which requires several days or weeks on a respirator in a hospital and can become a lifelong, debilitating condition.  African mothers have told me that they give their children milk to drink, if they have some.

Spilling it on the skin can be equally as hazardous.  Women have proudly told me that they rub kerosene on their children’s heads rid them of lice.

Controlled kerosene fires recently undertaken by South Africa’s Paraffin Association revealed that it takes just two minutes for temperatures to reach 1000 degrees C and eight minutes for a corrugated tin shack to burn completely.  For shacks close together, it’s easy to understand why a fire spreads quickly. What chance do emergency services have, even if they are available?

With all the horrific outcomes caused by kerosene perhaps the most heart-breaking are burn injuries.  In South Africa alone, an estimated 15,000 children survive serious burn injuries every year.  This figure does not include the many fatalities or anyone over the age of 12.  Such statistics, however, are hard to come by even in South Africa.  If data were collected over the whole of Africa, this number would surely be staggering.

Burns are the worst type of injuries in terms of trauma because they are both excruciatingly painful and deforming.  Severe burns cause major harm to motor skills and development.  At present South Africa is the only African country that can deal with large numbers of burn injuries. Chris Hani Baragwaneth Hospital in Soweto, with its 2,964 beds, is the largest acute hospital in the world. With a specialised burn treatment centre, it also houses Africa’s most comprehensive burn unit, only a 26-bed facility.  According to the hospital, most children admitted to the burn unit are under the age of nine.

With 46,000 kerosene-related fires and 50,000 paraffin-related burns sustained in South Africa in 2001 alone (the most recent data I could find), the availability of treatment is depressing.  According to Johannesburg’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences, burn injuries cost an estimated $US1 million in that city alone. Burn victims usually require multiple surgeries.  With the sheer number of kerosene related injuries coupled with medical costs these figures are almost certainly grossly underestimated.   Add medical care to the cost of emergency services, loss of time, loss of assets and loss of a house by people who have no insurance, the true loss of using kerosene can never be justified and the true cost can never be calculated.

Hundreds of thousands of families have stories to tell like those of Rose and Nyeri who have suffered heartbreaking loss due to kerosene. They suffer in silence under the radar screen and no one is tracking them.  These stories should no longer be ignored or just accepted as unfortunate.  They should be seen as an outrage to the dignity of the human person.

Energy Access – a matter of human rights

Despite the enormity of the problem – and the existence of reliable, cost effective solutions – access to energy is a missing Millennium Development Goal.  Access to energy underpins all eight goals yet astonishingly there is no mention of the word ‘energy’ in the entire document.

In contrast, the International Energy Agency calls for “urgent action” on the matter, and estimates that alleviating energy poverty would cost $36 billion per year.  Kerosene sales, by comparison, create a $38 billion per year industry globally, an estimated $11 billion in sub-Saharan Africa alone.  In essence, the world is already spending the money it needs to address the energy poverty problem.

Energy access is a prerequisite to achieving the socioeconomic rights set out in international human rights law including health standards and access to clean water.  The right to breathe clean air, work and study in relative safety – all of these rights are violated by the need for fuel lanterns and cook stoves.

Given the overwhelming body of evidence, I believe kerosene is a blatant violation of international human rights standards.

Energy poverty and the gender bias

Since 1999 I’ve headed a non-profit social enterprise called Lifeline Energy.  Over the past four years while in the field in various African countries, I have spoken with hundreds of poor and vulnerable women and children about their household energy use and expenditure.  What was reinforced with every group I spoke with is that all technologies and the energies used to power them have a gender bias.  There are exceptions, but largely men are in charge of household security and buy batteries for their flashlights (torches).  I knew from years of distributing Lifeline’s solar and wind-up radios that men also buy batteries for radios and control listening access.

In sub-Saharan Africa, kerosene is a ‘woman’s fuel’. In rural areas a woman walks many miles to buy kerosene at the market. In urban settlements or slums, she buys it in as little as 10c increments or by the tablespoon. It may be all that she may be able to afford.  Because of women’s work inside the home, they are constantly exposed to kerosene and its toxic fumes.

The result is that more than 1.6 million of the world’s poor die each year from the effects of indoor air pollution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).  This is caused from both cooking and lighting. This photo I took in Rwanda illustrates that if kerosene from a tin can lamp can blacken a wall, it is doing the same to lungs.

All forms of non-renewable energy – kerosene, batteries, candles, charcoal and firewood – constrain economic development.  When added to cell phone charging, fuels for lighting and cooking, energy can consume up to 60% of household incomes in sub-Saharan Africa.  Women are subjected to a grinding cycle of abject poverty, one that impossible to escape from it you’re spending big amounts on non-renewables.

Last year I walked into a rural household to see a mother happily nursing a two month old baby less than six inches from an open flame lamp at midday.  In her culture it is not acceptable to breastfeed where men might see you.  She had no idea what harm she could be causing her child.

She didn’t realise that breathing kerosene is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes, or that two-thirds of all lung cancer victims in developing countries are non-smoking women according to WHO.  One would think with its devastating consequences, kerosene related illnesses, burns and deaths would be tracked and monitored similar to HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB; however, this is not the case.  Well-known illnesses receive donor funding in poor countries whereas energy related illnesses are relegated to a footnote and fall under the non-communicable disease (NCD) category.

Safe kerosene education receives woefully inadequate attention from governments or the oil companies that sell it.  Comprehensive multi-media campaigns in local languages are urgently needed to encourage women to take advantage of alternatives where they do exist and to teach users ways to limit the health risks and exposure where possible.  This is especially important for children living on their own as heads of households.  They may lack trusted adults to guide them and adults themselves may not understand the range and scope of dangers.  School programmes should feature energy safety as a mandatory part of the curriculum.

Education advances are severely hampered by the way students must do their homework at night.  Kerosene burns the eyes and throat, making it impossible to study for more than a few minutes.  A record number of children are entering or returning to school in sub-Saharan Africa, yet an unintended consequence is that children like Rose are potentially harming their eyes and lungs, and even risking fires and burns, in an effort to earn good grades.

Thrusting clean energy to the top of the international agenda

The health and economic consequences of prolonged exposure to kerosene are so grave that they infringe upon the basic human rights of women and children who have no other viable energy alternatives. It is recognized in Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family.”  Access to clean water has been singled out as a key factor that will determine the success of the Millennium Development Goals, but not access to clean energy

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring water and sanitation a basic human right, but not access to clean energy.

To propel access to clean energy to the forefront of the international agenda it must be declared a basic human right.  This is the only way to put the required moral and legal pressure on countries  and international organizations that’s needed to take decisive action. Declaring access to energy a human right reorganizes the lens through which the issue is viewed.  It becomes not merely a goal or agenda item but a substantial imperative to which every individual is entitled.

The UN has declared 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. By launching UN–Energy, the UN states it is committed to ensuring universal access to modern energy services by 2030. It also aims to bring energy access innovation together with the correct policy to reach a global scale, developing and deploying new and appropriate solutions. These are important steps in the right direction. Grid and mini-grid electricity initiatives are underway in the region, but they often take years to become operational with huge financial investments required.

Solutions already exist. Barriers to the effective delivery of modern energy services must be eliminated. Off-grid portable renewable energy solar and wind-up LED lights and lanterns, as well as energy-efficient cook stoves have already been developed for these markets. However, often steep duties, as much as 40%, and taxes or VAT varying between 12% in Botswana to 19.35% in Cameroon, making them unaffordable to the poorest – those who need them most. With appropriate government oversight and financial support, reform of subsidies and duties and equal gender participation in entrepreneurial initiatives transitioning from kerosene to renewable energy would be the start to create safer environments and economic opportunities. Children, women, families and communities would be able to safely convert unproductive night-time hours into productive ones.

Kerosene and energy access are pressing human rights issues that governments and the international community are obligated to act upon with expediency to end the on-going struggle of women and children forced to use kerosene in their daily lives. There are many problems in the world that are extremely complex and difficult to solve. This is not one of them. With the right approach, the use of kerosene and the energy poverty that it perpetuates and intensifies can become a thing of the past.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog,News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Kristine Pearson @ 2:00 pm
How the Lifeplayer came about

June 9, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Our Lifeplayer is a finalist in the INDEX: Design to Improve Life Awards. We’re honoured to be a finalist (in one of five categories) out of nearly 1000 global entries.  INDEX: is the world’s top award for designs that address humanity’s biggest challenges. For Lifeline Energy that challenge is delivering information and educational content to large groups of marginalized, isolated or displaced communities on demand. The Lifeplayer makes that possible.

INDEX:’s recognition helps highlight how trusted voices can effectively address pressing issues like literacy, health, hygiene, violence, rights, trafficking, environment and business skills training for the poorest.  The Lifeplayer is powered by solar and a wind-up crank, enabling it to deliver learning 24/7 to anyone, anywhere – democratizing knowledge.

With advances in digital and media player (MP3) technologies, I knew designing a product that could be pre-loaded with huge amounts of content to be played over and over would be possible and practical.  If we got it right, it could be a game changer and impact millions. We tend to overlook that in the time of nano-technology, Internet, iPads, and Android phones, sometimes the power of the imagination sparked by a human voice is the most powerful.

For Lifeline Energy, the history of our product designs starts with stories of everyday life in rural Africa.  This is true with the Lifeplayer, a product that almost never came about.

When we began operating more than 12 years ago, we were working with original model wind-up radios.  Although they provided radio access to isolated communities, they would break if wound anti-clockwise. This was devastating to Rwandese orphans living on their own. As survivors of the genocide, having a voice on the radio they could trust meant so much. These children told me that they would listen to the radio from the time they woke up until they went to sleep. They were starved for information on current events: they wanted to know the weather and time; and practical information on the diseases from which they suffered, rape and violence against girls, farming, and life in general – all things that a family member would customarily provide.

Seeing the heartbreak that broken radios caused gave me the idea for a radio specifically designed for youngsters living on their own and for distance education. This flew against conventional wisdom, but it was something I deeply believed was needed and for which there was a market. These destitute and traumatized children were my compass; they told me what they wanted and needed and I set about making it happen.

Since its debut in 2003, the power-independent Lifeline radio has offered free learning access to tens of thousands of child-headed families and millions of children enrolled in radio distance education schools.

That said, as with every technology, there are limitations. A school may be located where a signal doesn’t reach. I recall in Pemba, an island off the coast of Tanzania, pupils weren’t able to listen to their school lessons for two weeks because the ship delivering diesel fuel to the community radio station didn’t arrive.  Or there was Mary, a Kenyan schoolgirl who missed four days of radio lessons because of her period. In South Africa, children in Kwa-Zulu Natal who lived on the wrong side of the stream, which became a torrent during the rainy season, lost weeks of schooling. If you miss a broadcast, it’s lost forever.

To begin creating the Lifeplayer, we wrote proposals and generated a design brief based on what teachers, content providers and community leaders told us they wanted. We sent proposals far and wide. A European government even agreed to fund it.  However, that fell through. Raising design and development funding isn’t easy at the best of times. In 2008, it was especially hard.  I felt very discouraged.

Then our US patron, Tom Hanks, changed everything. Not only did he fund our proposal, he enlisted his friends to support us.  Tom understands our technology and its positive impact on the poorest members of society. Having Tom’s financial backing was crucial, while his encouragement and kindness have been priceless.

I would be disingenuous if I were to say that it’s been easy bringing a design to market in this economic climate.  It’s not only been the toughest challenge of my own career, but also of its designer, Phil Goodwin.  Phil has had to work within a razor-thin budget to deliver a product that meets the expectations of end-users in some of the world’s toughest environments. He’s done it and he’s also been able to create an upgraded radio-only version of the Lifeplayer, called the Prime (which supersedes the old Lifeline radio).  Ultimately, he was able to design two products for the price of one, so to speak.

We believe that the Lifeplayer will enable poor children across the developing world achieve a more level playing field. Learners in the most remote schools who may gather under a tree still have to take the same exams as city kids with computers and electricity at home. Standardized school lessons loaded onto the Lifeplayer allows learning to take place when and where needed.
Another feature that teachers have told us they are excited about is that the Lifeplayer can record. They can record their own lessons in advance when they know they will be away from their classroom.

For communities that have lost everything, the Lifeplayer can disseminate important radio announcements to disaster or conflict-displaced populations, which also can be recorded for replay later. In addition, Lifeplayers can provide immediate psycho-social support and entertainment.

I feel profoundly proud as a small values driven organisation, attempting to correct the injustice of energy and information policy, to be recognised by INDIX:. This type of recognition of our work inspires us to strive even harder to fulfill our mission.

We salute the other finalists who also have been honoured.  I’m looking forward to seeing their designs and meeting the innovators behind them in early September in Copenhagen.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 8:31 am
Enabling Students to Study Safely

May 13, 2011

Project manager Chhavi Sharma distributes lights to students in Nairobi slum

Little Bees School is run by Mama Lucy Odipo in Starehe, a densely populated section of Nairobi’s Mathare Valley slum. Lifeline Energy has been working there for more than three years. Kristine Pearson, Lifeline Energy’s CEO, and I were there to distribute solar-powered and wind-up Lifelights.

When questioned about their study habits, they told us that they usually read by the poor flame of a candle or koroboi, the traditional kerosene lamp made from tin cans. Even then, their use is economised and carefully budgeted, so that the kerosene can be made to last as many days as possible.  All members of the household have to share it, as there is no electricity in the area.

The children use the substitutes for electricity, i.e. the candle or koroboi, to study and do their homework in the evenings, but cannot do so for more than 20-30 minutes at a stretch, as the smoke greatly irritates their eyes and often makes them spit up black soot, they went on to explain.

The hazardous and undesirable effects of candles and kerosene on indoor air quality, which result in health – especially respiratory – issues and accidents, such as burns and fires, is well documented. These children, some as young as 12 years old, confront these problems on a daily basis, since they also use the candles and korobois to go to the communal toilets and assist their mothers with household chores, like preparing the dinner, washing the utensils and making the beds, after dark.

The children told us that the lights will enable them to study for one or two hours every night, giving them enough time to complete their homework. They believe ti will improve their academic performance in school over time. This was extremely important to them, as some of them are gearing up for national exams at the end of this year, which will gain them entry into secondary schools. In addition, the lights will help them feel safer by making it easy for them to spot thieves lurking in the alleyways and snakes and scorpions, when they walk to the toilets in the dark. Household size averages five in Starehe and all will now benefit.

The distribution of the lights was empowering for so many children and their families, and extremely moving for both Kristine and myself, as it gave them access to a practical tool that will help change their lives and brighten their future in more ways than one with immediate effect.

Filed under: News,Updates from Field — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — ChhaviSharma @ 3:12 pm
Keeping Stock For Disasters

March 21, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Access to information, light and basic energy in a humanitarian crisis can be just as essential as food, water, medical supplies and shelter.

Aerial shot of the 2000 Mozambique floods

For the past 12 years, Lifeline Energy has been involved in several major humanitarian emergencies – the Mozambique floods of 2000, the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, the Pakistan floods and now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Natural disasters don’t discriminate between rich or poor, although the poor tend to suffer more since they own fewer assets and don’t have insurance. These five catastrophes alone have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than a hundred million people. In each instance we’ve provided either solar and wind-up radios or self-powering radios with lights to displaced populations working with local aid organisations – but only several weeks to months after the disaster.

Temporary Shelters in Haiti

When a humanitarian disaster has occurred, we’ve been contacted by other aid organisations, the UN, corporates wanting to help and even national governments all asking for our products right away.  Lifeline Energy being a charity, can afford to  hold only a small number of products as we procure them from our new product development and trading arm, Lifeline Technologies Trading, on as needed basis.

For years we’ve tried to persuade donors to fund a stockpile that would allow radios and lights to arrive as soon as possible and not weeks later when lives may have been lost.  There are aid depots in Dubai, Panama, Italy, Hong Kong and other locations around the world, which make dispatching goods a fairly straightforward process.

In an emergency, I believe that dependable radios or lights that wind-up are essential.  The sun may shine, but in a crisis, a robust winding system has proven time and again to be the most reliable power source. Offering displaced populations devices dependent on costly disposable batteries or solar power only is unsustainable.  People want and need information on-demand in a disaster – from where and when aid will be distributed, to how to find/locate missing loved ones and weather reports.  One also cannot underestimate the psychosocial support that music provides. In Japan, people also want trusted updates on the status of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant and radiation levels on a regular basis.

Having dependable light is similarly important for safety and security at night, especially for women, children and the elderly.  If cellular networks are operating, then a way to power cell phones is just as important.

For the Japan earthquake and tsunami, between the generosity of GlobalGiving’s donors and Oxfam Japan, we have 15,000 wind-up and solar Polaris radio-light-cell phone chargers due for delivery in Japan in early April. These are destined for mainly the elderly in the Tohuku Kanto region.  Japan utilises unique frequencies and radios need to be manufactured for this market specifically.

One of the reasons that we created our new MP3 enabled Lifeplayer is for emergencies. It can provide displaced populations with up to 64GB of educational and informational access anytime, anywhere to anyone.  Children can be organised immediately around lessons in their own language. Given its excellent sound quality, the Lifeplayer easily accommodates 60 listeners. Radio broadcasts can be recorded for listening later and people can record their own stories of their survival for generations to come.

As a small agency, we cannot afford to create or hold stockpiles, yet it’s crucial that our products are immediately ready to respond to the next humanitarian catastrophe. Let us never be accused of missing an opportunity to help.

Lifeline Energy stands ready to work with others around the world to share our conviction to increase our disaster preparedness for the next humanitarian emergency wherever that may be.

Filed under: Emergency appeal,Kristine Pearson's blog,News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 3:20 pm
A Tribute to Victor – a Hero of the Starehe Slum

February 17, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Women and men who devote their lives to making a difference for others are publicly honored as ‘heroes’ by CNN, Time magazine, Skoll Foundation and others.  I believe that the real heroes are those unsung, unrecognized people living in the communities they serve who are often living in dire poverty themselves.

One such hero was 31-year old Victor Ochieng. Victor had worked his way up from security guard to headmaster of Little Bees, a school built beside a refuse dump in Nairobi’s sprawling Mathare Valley slum.

In 2008 I was introduced to the much loved, irrepressible, larger than life, 60-year old Mama Lucy Odipo,  a community organizer and founder of the Little Bees School.  The school is situated in Starehe, a seven-hectare maze of rusty iron roofed shacks and shops, muddy alleyways, and rocky streets.  Mama Lucy received a Lifeline radio through a women’s group and she invited me to visit the school.

A colleague and I arrived to the parking area next to the sign (land) ‘grabbers will face necessary action’.  We walked down a slope criss-crossing the muddy, smelly stream of sudsy wash water mixed with raw sewage, which flowed into a narrow tributary of the brown Nairobi River that was choked with garbage.  We turned right into an unmarked dark passage just wide enough for two people and heard the sound of children laughing.  It was recess.


“Welcome to Little Bees, my name is Victor.”  A tall, thin man wearing khaki trousers and tennis shoes extended his hand to me with a smile. He told me that he was the head of security and proudly showed me around. Victor escorted me to the small playground, packed with children playing on equipment that included a rickety jungle gym, an upside down wheelbarrow and a seesaw.

On one side of the playground were sheet metal, dirt floored, sand flea infested, makeshift classrooms filled with second-hand desks.  Each classroom only had one small window. On the other side were two brick classrooms. I could see that they were building a second floor with plastic tarp walls. The children were all shimmying up and down a rough-hewn ladder as if it were stairs with a railing. It made me very nervous, but no one else seemed to be. The toilets were overflowing, as evidently the municipality had not emptied them. Little Bees would be condemned in America or Europe.

Nonetheless, the 20 orphans taken in by Mama Lucy and the 180-day students, many of whose parents were destitute, were as playful and full of life as any child in an upmarket school. They crowded around me and welcomed me with a song.  Their red and blue uniforms with white shirts were patched and mended hand-me downs, most of which did not fit. Every day the children ate a hot meal prepared by volunteer mothers from the neighborhood cooked in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire. Although hugely under-resourced, the children were loved, fed and thriving. Victor adored the children and they clearly loved him.

Primary education is free in Kenya.  There is an acute shortage of schools in slums. Non-formal schools like Little Bees spring up to provide an education offered by volunteer teachers, who may not have a teaching qualification.  Victor told me how much they appreciated listening to the school lessons broadcast by the Kenya Institute of Education on our radio, especially for subjects like science and maths.

A few months later, I returned to Little Bees and Victor greeted me like a long lost friend, telling me that he’s ‘moved up’ to librarian and head of procurement. I had a Tom Hanks Day t-shirt with me given to Lifeline Energy by Kevin Turk, an American who raises funds for us each year through his International Tom Hanks Day fundraising event. It was too big for the children, so I gave it to Victor.

As I was taking some video, Victor reappeared in his new t-shirt and I casually ask him if he knew whom Tom Hanks was? He thought for a minute and said the he did not.  I asked him to guess.  Here’s the sweet video.

VictorandTomHanks

Over the next few visits, ‘Tommy Honks’ as Victor called him became an inside joke between us and we always laughed about it.

Last year in May, before the World Cup, I gave Victor a Vuvuzela in the colors of the South African flag. It was the first one that anyone had seen (other than in a newspaper) and Victor swiftly became the Pied Piper of Starehe. As he blew it and the children followed him around the school and into the street.  He was so proud of his new ‘trumpet’ and he loved entertaining the community.

Every time I’ve been in Nairobi, probably nine times in the past three years, I have visited Little Bees.  Each time Victor had been promoted – from security, to procurement, to librarian to social studies teacher, to deputy headmaster. Victor’s life was the school and he was always making renovations and improvements. On my last visit he was being groomed to take over as headmaster, enabling Mama Lucy to slow down.

I emailed Mama Lucy in January to tell her I was coming to visit. She wrote me back and told me that Victor had been murdered.  He went out at night to buy medicine for his young son, Meso, when three thugs stabbed him in the stomach and snatched his cell phone.  He died later that night in Kenyatta Hospital.

When I visited Little Bees twice in early February, sadness filled the air.  I learned that Victor, who was survived by a young wife and two young children, was Mama Lucy’s fourth born son, out of 15 children. She had never mentioned that Victor was her child. She didn’t want me to think that he had been promoted out of nepotism, but instead because of his abilities, devotion and dedication to the children – the ‘little bees’.

Victor was buried on 12 February at his birthplace in Kisumu, in Kenya’s Western province at a funeral attended by hundreds of mourners.

How this slum school survives on so little is a miracle, but how it will survive without Victor I don’t know.

Living in a Nairobi slum where the conditions of life are unspeakable in 2011 – overcrowding, inadequate housing, the paucity of basic services, the lack of quality health care, combined with high levels of violence and insecurity  – where a life is reduced to a cell phone, is nothing short of a human rights abuse.

Victor was robbed of his phone and paid for it with his life.  And now Mama Lucy was robbed of a son, the school was robbed of devoted role model and leader and humanity was robbed of a hero.

Please let us know if you would like to make a contribution to the Little Bees School, which can either be done through Lifeline Energy or sent directly to Mama Lucy.


Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog,News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Kristine Pearson @ 12:57 pm
Radios for the referendum in Southern Sudan

January 11, 2011

By Kristine Pearson

Radio remains the most important communications medium in sub-Saharan Africa, especially so in Southern Sudan.  With electricity, cellular coverage and Internet restricted to a handful of cities in an area the size of Texas, radio remains the only technology that can reach isolated groups. That said, batteries outside towns and trading posts are hard to come by and expensive, making rural communities even harder to reach.

Picture courtesy T Thielen

From late 2006 to 2008, Lifeline Energy shipped 265,000 of our solar and wind-up radios to Southern Sudan in support of a broad-based civic education initiative spearheaded by the National Democratic Institute (NDI). The radios were deployed to support Let’s Talk, a 30-minute weekly programme covering a host of issues – political transition, rights and responsibilities in a democracy, the new constitutional framework and political processes. Providing listening access through our power-independent radios not only helped ensure access for women and youth, but also enabled people to listen to topics of interest like the weather, news and educational broadcasts. Let’s Talk was broadcast on Sudan Radio Service and Miraya FM, the south’s most popular station.

In a country with less than 50 miles of paved roads, delivering these huge consignments was no easy task, as evidenced by the trucks transporting radios stuck in the mud on the Juba-Yei road. The responsibility of distributing the radios fell to NDI’s partner NGOs working in the southern states for use by listening groups.

Juba-Yei road

Our project manager, Chhavi Sharma, and I travelled to Juba in February 2008 to work with NDI’s on-the-ground partners to help create a training programme. Although I had been to Khartoum, it was my first trip to the south. The training, attended by about 40 local and international NGO staff of the partner NGOs, took place in a community centre overlooking the Nile. Literacy levels in Southern Sudan are some of the lowest in the world and for women, literacy is an appalling 8%. Therefore, the training had to be highly visual and pictorial. Teachers and community leaders were identified as radio guardians, but we understood that many might never have operated a radio before.

Radio training programme in Juba

The lack of infrastructure makes feedback difficult to obtain.  However, I am confident that our blue radios have made a positive difference to people’s engagement in this week’s referendum to decide whether or not Southern Sudan should become Africa’s 53rd state.

I have watched with immense interest the television images of the long and patient queues of high spirited women and men wearing their best clothes and baking for hours in the sun waiting to stamp their thumbprints on the ballot paper.  It brought back fond memories of 1994, when I waited for several hours myself to vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections on the second of three election days. The role that radio played in informing around those elections cannot be underestimated either.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 6:13 pm
TEDWomen conference – “fuel–based violence”

December 13, 2010

By Kristine Pearson in Washington, DC.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the first TEDWomen conference in Washington, DC.  Over the past two decades I’ve attended at many women-centered forums, but this was the most intense and wide-ranging, attracting around 600 overwhelmingly female delegates and 50 mainly female speakers. True, most speakers and participants were American, but we also heard the voices of inspirational women from around the world who are creating and making change. In our own way, we all participated in the conversation, and an incredible collective conversation it was.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at TEDWomen Conference

The driving force behind this event, Pat Mitchell, I heard described last year as a woman’s woman.  She’s also a feminist’s feminist who has been a mentor and role model to me and I suspect hundreds of other women over her celebrated career as a journalist.

We listened to women tell about their struggles and stories,  like a mother-daughter doctor team from Somalia; National Geographic filmmakers Beverly and Derek Joubert; India’s top cop Kiran Bedi; the ‘man-box’ originator Tony Parker; environmental commentator Naomi Klein; patient capital pioneer Jacqueline Novogratz; Phyllis Rodriguez, who lost her son in the World Trade Center on September 11 and Aicha El-Wafi, mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence without parole for conspiring to kill US citizens; surprise speaker Hilary Clinton; and concluding presenter, the irrepressible, extraordinary Eve Ensler.

Former Canadian politician, UN Ambassador and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Steven Lewis, who I had never heard speak before, delivered an impassioned, blistering attack on the UN for failing women in terms of violence, rape, HIV/AIDS and other critical issues.

Wow, I thought, there’s another form of violence that no one’s talking about – it’s silent, visible as wispy black smoke and it stinks – it’s kerosene. Brought to us by oil companies, and the entire energy supply is virtually entirely men even down to the local kerosene sellers,  this highly flammable fossil fuel is largely unregulated in the developing world.  Kerosene or paraffin, as it’s also known, violates a woman’s eyes and lungs (made much worse if she is HIV positive or has TB).  According to the World Bank, 780 million women and children inhale fumes equivalent to smoke from two packs of cigarettes a day.  Two-thirds of lung cancer victims in developing countries are women.

When I was in Kenya’s Maasailand earlier in the year, I asked 90 rural kerosene-dependent women how many had suffered burns on themselves or their children and at least 20 women raised their hands.  A few told stories of fires that cost them dearly, including the lives of a loved one.  Some shared how their children had ingested kerosene believing it to be water.

If ‘fuel–based violence’ impacted men in the same way, something would have been done by now to ensure the poorest had some form of access to modern energy.  But because women in Africa so often have only a small voice — or none at all — millions are suffering scratchy blood shot eyes, acute respiratory illness, asthma, chronic bronchitis and even pulmonary disease.  It’s time we all step up and help poor women everywhere access clean energy.

So thank you, Stephen Lewis, for giving me an additional frame in which to encase the deadly consequences of kerosene usage.  And thanks to all the wonderful people who staged such a powerful
two days and who gave so openly of themselves.

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A night at the 10th annual Tech Museum of Innovation Awards

November 10, 2010

Dr Peter Friess, President of the Tech Museum of Innovation, with the Lifeline radio

By Kristine Pearson in Santa Clara

What a thrill to attend the 10th annual Tech Museum of Innovation Awards in Santa Clara on Saturday night. I was absolutely gob smacked that Peter Friess, the head of Silicon Valley’s Tech Museum walked on stage winding a Lifeline radio. Peter talked about the success of the Lifeline radio and Lifeline Energy (well, Freeplay Foundation, as we were known then) as the first winner of this award in 2001 and then excerpts of my acceptance speech was played.  I had no idea they were going to do this. What a huge honour it was to be formally recognized by the Tech Museum again.

This was the first time the gala was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center and was the largest attendance ever at 1,800 guests. Many attendees were legends in Silicon Valley’s tech community. Everyone had come to find out who the five winners would be and also to hear Queen Rania al Abdullah of Jordan.

Queen Rania of Jordan with Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter

Queen Rania, this years’ James C. Morgan Humanitarian Award honouree, spoke purposefully, passionately and eloquently about the importance of education.  She encouraged everyone to ‘dream the undreamt’ and to ‘imagine the unimaginable’.

After dinner the award winners were announced from a field of three finalists  laureates in five categories:

•    Intel Environment Award – Peer Water Exchange, a project of Blue Planet Network – Worldwide
•    BD Biosciences Economic Development Award – Alexis T. Belonio, Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology
•    Microsoft Education Award – BBC World Service Trust, BBC Janala
•    The Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award – A Single Drop for Safe Water
•    Nokia Health Award – Venkatesh Mannar, Micronutrient Initiative

In this year’s education category I was delighted that one of our partners, the BBC World Service Trust, won for their English language mobile phone programming in Bangladesh.

Kristine Pearson accepting the first Tech Museum of Innovation Award in 2001

The Tech Awards have grown over the years into the world’s premiere awards for technology benefitting humanity and it will always be our honour to have been the very first winner.  The iconic Lifeline radio – which is now retired and has been replaced by the Prime – is a featured display at the Tech Museum in Silicon Valley.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Lifeline Energy @ 4:52 pm
Seeing Gladys again after four year

October 11, 2010

An update by Kristine Pearson in Kabras

Gladys Kadogomoses’ big blue radio works perfectly after more than four years of constant use by her and her ladies’ listening group. She told me with great affection what it had meant to her – how she learned so much about health, nutrition and women’s rights; how she followed events during the frightening unrest in 2008 on the BBC; how she listened to the debates around the referendum; and most importantly about the programmes that told her about the medicines she needed to take and when to take them – because Gladys is HIV positive.

I first met gracious and friendly Gladys just after she had been diagnosed. She told me openly that she felt hopeless, ashamed and contemplated suicide because her deceased truck-driver husband, had left her nothing other than a disease. Then she joined the women’s self-help group Vumilia (perseverance in Swahili) and met weekly with other women in similar circumstances. With support, encouragement, and acceptance coupled with anti-retroviral drugs, she began to put her life back together.

In 2006 Gladys received a Lifeline radio along with 30 other positive women. She was the only one not a grandmother.

This was the first time since then that I had been back to Vumilia, which is in Kabras, just north of Kakamega in Western Kenya. On the weekend, I visited Gladys in her home to find out about her first night with her Lifelight.  The day before she and 30 other women, participated in a Lifelight workshop.

Gladys beamed when she told me that her three children shared the light to study and for the first time she could see properly at night to read her Bible.  Also for the first time, they used the pit latrine after dark, feeling safe from snakes and being able to see. She said, “without this light, at night we are otherwise forced to use a small white bucket.”

In addition, she spoke about the savings on paraffin that she would make.  Gladys, like most women I’ve met who live in poverty, buy paraffin daily in small amounts.  She spends anywhere from 20-40 Kenya shillings (25-50 US cents) per day averaging KS10,950 annually or a staggering $135. When the children study for exams she buys enough for light three lights.  With the Lifelight, her savings will be significant.

Vumilia’s founder, Rose Ayuma Moon, who grew up in the Kabras area, established in 2004.  Although she lives in Nairobi, she set up Vumilia because she saw how the skyrocketing HIV/AIDS pandemic was disrupting the lives of alarming numbers in her community and at that time the government was doing very little. Today Vumilia provides health and psycho-social support to 200 HIV positive women – all but two are grannies. In addition, Rose, who tirelessly and heroically divides her time between Kabras and Nairobi, also established the Vulmilia Home for Orphaned Girls, a residential facility for 22 girls aged 3-16 in 2006.

Filed under: Kristine Pearson's blog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Kristine Pearson @ 12:58 pm
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