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.

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.

It is such a gratifying feeling to see something that you’ve nurtured for so long come to life.  Last week we successfully launched a tool that we truly believe will be a game-changer in educational access for millions in the developing world.  This is first device ever created for humanitarian use that allows content to be pre-recorded or loaded later (up to 64GB), can record live voice or radio broadcasts and even charges a cell phone.  Called the Lifeplayer, it has been phenomenally well received by development specialists, partners and the media alike.

We spent three years researching and developing the Lifeplayer – determining the need; establishing what features were most desirable and practical; ensuring it could be reliably powered by a solar panel or wind-up energy; deciding how we could bring different technologies already in use in Africa and elsewhere together; and most importantly, how we would get the research and development funded.  We were so blessed that Tom Hanks stepped in and not only contributed generously to the Lifeplayer’s development, but he asked his friends to help, too.  We could not have asked for a more devoted supporter on every level.  His tweet about the Lifeplayer was retweeted by thousands of others who spread the word virally.

There are a lot of people who have made the MP3-enabled  Lifeplayer possible.  Chief amongst them is Phil Goodwin, who heads our new product development and trading arm, Lifeline Technologies Trading Ltd.  Phil is the design principal who has headed a multi-disciplinary team of model makers, industrial designers and software engineers, as well as the excellent group at our production facility in Asia.  Due to component shortages brought about by the economic recession, we experienced some unforeseen delays, but finally the Lifeplayer is en route to being included in a host of important initiatives that will bring high quality information and educational content to those who otherwise would not have these learning opportunities.

I also want to thank the Lifeline Energy team and boards for their terrific support for their unwavering enthusiasm and belief in our vision.

New York has been the perfect place to launch the Lifeplayer, especially with the UN General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The city is abuzz with excitement (and traffic snarls) and I’m honored to be making an input tomorrow at the CGI about women and the environment.

International Tom Hanks Day organiser, Kevin Turk

This year’s International Tom Hanks Day raised $1265! The money raised from the event will go to our Haiti Humanitarian Radio Fund. The project provides wind-up and solar-powered Lifeline radios to children effected by the January 2010 earthquake. Thanks to contributions from donors like Kevin, they will be able to obtain access to basic education and receive ongoing education.

International Tom Hanks Day was founded by Chicago resident Kevin Turk. Kevin started the day by inviting a small group of friends to his house for a Tom Hanks movie marathon. Through word of mouth, the event grew each year.

Inspired by Tom Hank’s commitment to good causes, Kevin decided to make the day a charity event. The fundraiser now takes place Galaway Bay, a bar in Chicago where Kevin sells T-shirts, food and tickets for a raffle to raise money.

Kevin already has big ideas for next year, when the event will move to a larger venue.

“This year was a huge success. People were at the event before the doors even opened and they stayed well beyond the event hours.” say Kevin. “We are busting at the seems in our current venue, so next year we should be moving up to a larger space with a lot more activities. Thanks to Tom Hanks for all the support.”

For more information, please visit the International Tom Hanks Day website. Lifeline Energy would like to thank Kevin Turk – we look forward to the next fundraiser!

Operating as Freeplay Foundation has served us well for the past 11 years, however, we feel that our new name better reflects our wider mission to tackle energy poverty head-on for the poorest and most vulnerable.

In addition to including Lifeline radios and Lifelights in projects and programmes, in the near future Lifeline Energy will launch a brand new, revolutionary communications tool that we believe will have a profound impact on education and information access in the developing world. We will send you more news about this soon.

We will continue to focus our research on the impact of dangerous kerosene, firewood and candles, and the harmful effects these have on vulnerable women and children. This better equips us to create clean energy products and to advocate approaches that reduce their use and improve quality of life.

Lifeline Energy remains a 501 (c)(3) registered charity in the USA, a registered charity in the UK and is a Section 18A and 21 non-profit in South Africa. Under our new name, Lifeline Energy will retain all current board members as well as our ambassadors: Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks in America; noted humanitarian Terry Waite in Europe; Mount Everest and South Pole mountaineer Sibusiso Vilane in Africa.

Please visit our redesigned website and learn more about Lifeline Energy; www.lifelineenergy.org
All email addresses that were formerly @freeplayfoundation.org will now be @lifelineenergy.org.

We are proud to announce an innovative and cost effective programme to get Haitian children quickly back on an educational track following the January earthquake. Reports from Haiti are saying that children could face months or even years without education, making our project all the more important to get rapidly off the ground.

The initiative is a joint venture with leading radio education provider Education Development Center (EDC) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) – both organizations have extensive experience and an outstanding track record of working in Haiti.

The project ensures vulnerable children obtain a solid basic education, via Ministry of Education-supported interactive radio instruction using Lifeline radios. The broadcasts provide lessons in math and Creole as well as vital life skills lessons on topics such as water and hygiene.

In addition, EDC will provide the content and instruction for an early childhood education programme that caregivers and children can follow together. NDI will work with its broad network of Haitian community action committees to identify children, including orphans, whose schools have been destroyed and also distribute our Lifeline radios. Furthermore, broadcasts will be designed to incorporate post-trauma programming and provide psychosocial support to quake survivors.

Immediately after the earthquake, our US ambassador, Mr Tom Hanks kick-started our fundraising campaign. More than 1,000 Freeplay wind-up and solar-powered Lifeline radios have been committed. However, we need to deploy a further 2,000 to successfully implement this project, which will reach up to 100,000 children.

Radio is Haiti’s most popular form of media as electricity rates are low and batteries are expensive and hard to come by, especially in rural areas. Lifeline radios solve the problem of access. Let’s also remember that the radios will help with early warnings for the hurricane season.

The most recent UN reports confirm that all schools in western Port-au-Prince have been destroyed as well as 40% of schools in the southern part of the city – leaving thousands of children without access to education in a country where 47% of the population are illiterate.

“We have identified the most effective placement of our Lifeline radios for the rebuilding effort in Haiti. They’re robustly engineered for large group listening,” said Lifeline Energy CEO Kristine Pearson. “Thousands of children, including those newly orphaned and those who cannot attend formal school, will receive essential lessons even under the most basic of conditions. We cannot allow more time to be lost – education is the key to mitigating poverty in their lifetimes.”

We are ready to launch this project and we need your help to reach our goal. The cost of a delivered Lifeline radio is $65.00/£38.00 however any amount will be appreciated. This equals a few cents per child.

Make your donation by visiting our website:
http://www.lifelineenergy.org/haitiearthquakefund.html

Why radios are needed

Access to information is critical both during an emergency and in reconstruction. Although often overlooked, news and updates from local and international sources is an urgent need, along with water, food, shelter and medical attention. Radio stations are broadcasting and our radios will help aid agencies, the UN and the government get essential information to the population.

The Washington post has written an excellent about the importance of radio information

But what the article fails to cover is how will people be able to listen to the programming? Electricity levels were low to start with and batteries will be difficult to come by and expensive. The most vulnerable groups, including women and children, are in danger of being excluded.

What we can do to help

We have an established track record in humanitarian radio relief having been directly involved in the Balkans conflict, post-genocide Rwanda, the Mozambique floods, in refugee camps in Tanzania and Kenya, and the Asian tsunami. Lifeline Energy has an excellent network of partner organizations on the ground and a proven methodology for distribution.
The Lifeline radio we developed is one of the most successful aid-only products in history and is robustly engineered for harsh conditions. With AM/FM and short-wave bands, it will pick up both local and international stations and with its excellent sound quality, large groups will be able to hear it clearly. It operates on solar energy coupled with a fail-safe winding mechanism.

Working with credible local partners, the radios will be distributed to shelters, schools, churches, health clinics and wherever people are gathered. As always, key beneficiaries will be women, teachers and community leaders. According to UNICEF, there are an estimated one million orphans across the country and priority will be given to provide access to a radio.

We need your support in two ways:

$32.00 will provide all inclusive funding for an emergency response radio. We have 15,000 radios appropriate for smaller group listening packaged and ready to be flown in to Haiti immediately. All we need is funding.
$65.00 for each Lifeline radio, which can be heard by 40-50 listeners, and includes shipping and distribution costs. These radios will be used mostly in the reconstruction phase but must be ordered soon.

You can also make a one off or recurring donation and for any amount by visiting Haiti Humanitarian Radio Relief Fund page

Thank you for your support. If you have any questions, please contact our Digital Fundraising and Marketing Manager, Bhavna Malkani on bmalkani@lifelineenergy.org.

Kristine Pearson
Chief Executive

Official Tom Hanks Day Facebook group