What struck me about Lifeline Energy was more than the mere prospect of experience in marketing. It was the uniqueness in what the organisation focused on and aimed to achieve. It is a non-profit focused on dealing with unique issue of energy poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as other regions in the world. It focuses on providing solar-powered and wind-up lighting and radios and MP3s to rural communities with the aim to provide safe lighting for daily activities, information, education and access to communication with the outside world.

Few understand the importance of light and communication. Instead the general ideas regarding development relate to the big in-your-face issues such as daily income levels, famine, etc. This is not to say these issues are not important. However while a large percentage of the world’s development resources focus on these issues, the attention given to the basic concepts of light and communication within a community is just not there. As Kristine Pearson (CEO) said to me while explaining Lifeline Energy, “You need to have been in the field and out there to see and understand what radio does. When a child can suddenly hear a radio programme and learn about things that she never even thought about. You have to see for yourself to see how radio completely opens up someone’s world.”

By opening up your world, Pearson refers to how many aspects of daily life the organisation can affect. By providing safe and efficient lighting products, the use of dangerous kerosene as a lighting fuel reducing the detrimental effects on communities caused by fires and inhalation.  This is a particularly common problem in poor countries.  Clean light also helps children study, boosting attendance and exam results. Such a simple plan has found a starting point to a solution required to achieve the UN Millennium Goals. Likewise, projects using radio have helped communities in several different ways, like bringing information to remote areas in the form of news as well as educational programs for healthcare initiatives. There’s a long running primary education programme in Zambia called ‘Learning at Taonga Market’ which improves education levels in communities.

It’s one of the cardinal rules when you’re interviewing – detach yourself from the interviewee. Ask questions, take notes, but never get emotionally involved in the story. To put it simply, it isn’t professional to have a vested interest in the person’s life. I’ve always upheld this rule, that was until I met Nanjeke.

I first noticed Nanjeke at the back of the classroom at Moon City community school in Lusaka. She was well-mannered and exceptionally shy. When the teacher asked a question the other students squirmed in their seats hoping the teacher would pick on them, while Nanjeke would sheepishly raise her hand, copying the other students, but secretly hoping she wouldn’t be called upon. But there was no missing her – at just ten-years old Nanjeke was over five foot tall. In fact, she was already taller than me!

After class had finished I asked the teacher if I could speak to Nanjeke. She came over to me with her head bowed as if she had done something wrong. “So what’s your name?” I asked. Averting her eyes, she quietly responded: “Nanjeke. I’m sorry I just started school”.

Nanjeke lost both her parents when she was two to HIV/AIDS. At the time she was living in a rural area of Zambia. After her parents passed away she went to live with her grandmother. A few years ago, they moved to Lusaka to live with her uncle. It was then that she decided to take her future into her own hands.

“I told my grandmother I wanted to go to school after I saw all the other children going,” she says. With no money to afford school uniforms, supplies or the starting fee for Zambia’s “free” public school system, her family turned to the Moon City community school. The school was not far from her uncle’s house and a non-obligatory school uniform was provided along with school supplies.

It has now been a month since Nanjeke started at Moon City. She may be shy but her skills are developing.

After ten minutes of asking her questions and her timidly responding, she finallylifted here head when I asked what she wants to be when she grows up. She emphatically responded, “I want to go to university and become a lawyer. I know I can do this if I do well in school.”

Out of many children I spoke to during my time in Zambia, Nanjeke’s story stays with me. Although quiet, she chose a new path for herself at such a young age. I am confident that she has a bright future ahead of her.

Uzma was in Lusaka observing the Ministry of Education’s Learning at Taonga Market radio distance education initiative in action. Lifeline Energy has been providing solar and wind-up radios to ensure educational access to all Zambian children since the pilot project was launched in 1999. So far 900,000 children have benefited from the programme across Zambia.

Lifeline Energy’s Prime radios are being introduced to the programme.

“Where does Balkiss come from?”, asks the man at the check-in counter for Ethiopian Airlines at Heathrow. He is, of course, referring to my middle name. “Oh, it’s my grandmother’s name, it’s from Yemen,” I respond. “Oh no”, he interjects, “It’s actually from Ethiopia. It was one of the names of the Queen of Sheba who ruled Ethiopia and Yemen. It’s a beautiful name.”

I was impressed. I know it is a name rich with history, but that was one of the very few times my middle name hasn’t been mangled and mispronounced. I take this as a good omen for the week ahead.

I am on my way to Lusaka, flying via Addis Ababa, to see first-hand the impact of our radios in the Learning at Taonga Market radio-distance education programme we’ve been involved with for over a decade. This is one of many firsts for me: It’s the first time I’ve visited Zambia; seen our solar and wind-up radios in action; or been to sub-Saharan Africa for that matter.

I’m looking forward to visiting Zambia. I have heard a lot about the country from friends who have visited, but nothing compares to experiencing it with your own eyes. The weather is an obvious plus, as it is rainy season so you get that mixture of sun and the cool breeze after it rains. In addition, I’m relishing being away from the London weather.

However, the most important part of my trip are the children our radios are supporting. I’ve tested our solar and wind-up Prime radios, but nothing will compare to seeing them being used for the large classroom lessons they are designed for.

The Learning at Taonga Market programme – initiated by Zambia’s Ministry of Education – benefits hundreds of thousands of children who are unable to attend formal school, as well as supporting government classrooms. We are now introducing our Prime radios into Zambia, helping to ensure that these children will have access to an education and, more importantly, a brighter future.

Hopefully my good omen in London will last for my entire stay.

Video certainly did not kill the radio star and the much vaunted demise of radio has just not happened.  Indeed radio, like cinema has flourished after the initial onslaught of television in the early sixties.  New media and new challenges face radio in a digital age and market dominated by the internet and web based solutions.  But for most of Africa and those in the developing world the transistor radio pressed to the ear is the ubiquitous image.

Frank Reidy

The high-minded model of radio espoused by the first Managing Director of the BBC John Reith: “educate, inform and entertain”, still has relevance in the era of commercial broadcasting and the public service model has survived into the digital era.  For most Africans the colonial and post-colonial era  radio stations such as the BBC World Service, Deutche Welle, Radio France, Voice of America provide services far beyond those any indigenous stations focused on.  Concepts such as fairness, impartiality and accountability were stressed in this public service ethos.  In the Cold War era radio was seen an intrinsic element of foreign policy with any development potential seen as a secondary spin off.

In the day to day struggle for survival in many parts of Africa, particularly rural Africa, Reithian concepts have little or no meaning. That does not mean the radio audience is not discerning and it recognises instantly what it likes to hear  and it knows what is good radio.  Like audiences elsewhere Rwandans love to hear themselves through their drama, music, debate and discussion.  The radio soaps neither patronise or preach but integrate into plots, sub-plots and character that which is most familiar: themselves.  With clever story lines agricultural advice is woven seamlessly into twice weekly episodes. Health advice is not pushed but is again part and parcel of the plot and debate, within the programme structure.  Debate and discussions rather than diktat is the preferred route.

But without radio receivers all the high quality programming in the world would just vanish into the ether.  The notion of having a radio in every room in the house, in the car or truck is a concept alien to so many Africans.  An old radio requires keeping it “fed” with batteries – a luxury beyond many.  The all-singing, all-dancing phone that is also a radio and MP3 player is a still a distant dream for so many.

Working in rural Rwanda in the years following the genocide I witnessed first hand the power of radio.  Radio was a force for evil in those terrible days of 1994. The then Government used the airwaves to foment hatred and division.  But radio could also be used to foster reconciliation, democracy and good governance.  The post-genocide generation now faced the HIV/Aids epidemic.  Child-headed households, with little or no state help or intervention faced a bleak future.  Both the local and international NGOs struggled to cope but with goodwill and much effort a corner has been turned.

Kristine Pearson instructing on how to use a solar and wind-up radio

It would be foolish to ascribe to radio any notion of being a panacea. But as part of an integrated model for development, radio has been a game changer on so many levels.  Small things make big differences.  Can you imagine a farmer not listening intently to accurate weather forecasts?  Health advice is listened to because it is a matter of life and death.

Then, to the radio itself.  The simplest is often the best and when you have it right make it better.  The wind-up technology Kristine Pearson showed me in a Kigali hotel back in 1999 has certainly moved on.  It was very good then and it is even better now.  And you don’t need focus groups or action plans to tell you the joy radio has brought to rural Rwanda.  I saw the reactions, I felt the joy and I know that the simple invention of the wind-up radio has achieved so much.

The challenges facing Africa are changing with its climate.  And radio in its many guises will have a key role to play.  Sure, the technology will change and the radio programmes will be cleverer and better.  But without radio that does not need to be fed with expensive batteries, it could all be in vain.  As they used to say here in rural Ireland:  “Turn it on and turn it up”.

During his 25 year military career Frank Reidy served in the Middle East with the UN and in Rwanda on secondment to GOAL, an Irish NGO. A graduate in Communications Studies from Dublin City University, Frank lectured in the Irish Military and on retirement was a researcher and reporter with the Irish state broadcasting company RTÉ. While serving as County Director Rwanda for Refugee Trust International in 1999/2000 Frank implemented a radio distribution programme in partnership with Lifeline Energy. The programme focused on child-headed households and widows of the Rwandan genocide.  Project Muraho in 2004/5 brought Frank back again to Rwanda. In partnership with Care International and Frangipani, 7,200 of Lifeline Energy’s radios were distributed.

I started interning at Lifeline Energy in May, after completing my Masters at SOAS. Having grown up in Africa and as the son of parents working in development, I thought that I had a pretty good grasp of what to expect and the issues I’d be working with, however, my time at Lifeline Energy has taught me that there is still so much I don’t know!

Before working at Lifeline Energy I was quite ignorant about the idea of energy poverty and viewed problems such as kerosene as a necessary evil on a continent that has no immediate solution to energy issues. I hadn’t realized the extent of energy poverty and how deeply it can affect issues such as health. I now know that solutions do exist, and I think the challenge lies in changing perceptions about how people affected by energy poverty view their lives. This can be done through providing them with sustainable access to information and education.

Another thing I’ve learnt at Lifeline Energy is how the simplicity of radio or light does so much more than what you would expect. It’s not just about being able to have on-demand access to information, or a light to study in the dark. It’s about the opportunity that these simple, clean solutions provide to improve people’s prospects and make better, more informed decisions about their daily lives. There is no doubt that access to clean, safe, sustainable energy should be a basic human right, and I think this is an urgent issue that Lifeline Energy is championing.

Africa is and should be for Africans, and it is them who should be making the decisions to drive them forward. I think the best thing we can do, and what Lifeline Energy does, is give them the tools and a platform for them to make better decisions, together, about their future.

I’ve always wanted to work with and for African countries, and Lifeline Energy has made me even more enthusiastic about this prospect.

I’ve been interning at Lifeline Energy for three months and so far it’s been an incredible learning experience.  I’ve learned more about how development occurs on the ground in two months than I did in a year of graduate school.  When I first started, I knew that much of sub-Saharan Africa was off the grid, but I hadn’t conceptualized what this meant for daily lives.  For example, I didn’t realize that millions are still lighting their homes and fueling their stoves with kerosene.  Kristine’s blog really highlighted the dangers of kerosene for me as well.  Some of the statistics about energy poverty are staggering.  The fact that some people are forced to spend 40 to 60 percent of their income on kerosene makes it impossible to break the cycle of poverty.  The gender dimensions of energy poverty are also sobering, as is women’s lack of access to information in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, both of which Lifeline Energy addresses.

I was struck by how much the lives of young women were changed simply by having access to solar lights.  Access to radio also has a transformative effect on the lives of women and girls.  In one report I read, it was revealed that after forming listening groups, Somali women in Kenya’s Dadaab camps began talking about important issues like FGM and gender-based violence, which is the first step to stopping both practices.  In fact, some women reported that they had decided not to submit their daughters to FGM because of information they received through the radio broadcasts.  It hadn’t occurred to me that something as simple as a radio or a light could change people’s lives so much. It definitely hadn’t occurred to me that my own life would be transformed in the course of three months, but it has.

The team here at Lifeline Energy is amazing.  I’ve learned a great deal from each one of them and I would like to thank them for making my time here at Lifeline Energy enjoyable.

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.

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 and who are often live in 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 one of our radios 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 unpainted brick classrooms. I could see that they were building a second floor with plastic tarp walls. The children shimmied up and down a rough-hewn ladder as if it were stairs with a railing. It made me nervous, but no one else seemed to be. The toilets were overflowed, 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, some of whom are disabled, and the more than 180 day students, 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 asked 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.  With each visit Victor proudly showed off his latest renovation. 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 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.

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

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.

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.