In Pakistan, solar lamps turn women into entrepreneurs

A project is training Light Ladies, who operate and maintain solar charging stations in their homes that boost their incomes significantly while cutting carbon emissions.

By Aamir Saeed, Thomson Reuters Foundation August 6, 2015

 

 Courtesy of the Buksh Foundation

 

BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan — As the sun sets and darkness falls over a village outside Bahawalpur, Pakistan, Shama Bibi switches on her solar lantern and starts sewing clothes for an upcoming family wedding.
Not long ago, nightfall would have forced her to stop working. But now with access to solar-powered lamps, Bibi can sew as long as she needs to.
"The solar lantern has changed my life," said the 35-year-old widow and mother of three. "I can sew clothes even in the night and earn enough to make both ends meet."

Bibi has recently become a "Light Lady", one of the women that the Buksh Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Lahore, Pakistan, has trained to help spread the benefits of solar energy throughout rural Pakistan.

Under the foundation's project Lighting a Million Lives, in collaboration with The Energy and Resources Institute in India, women are taught how to operate and maintain solar charging stations in their homes.
The two "Light Ladies" in each of the focus villages also are given 50 solar lanterns to rent to others in their community.
The one-time cost of around $5,500 to set up a solar charging station and set of lanterns is funded by donors. Bibi says she charges a daily rent of 4 rupees ($0.04) per lantern and earns around 5,500 rupees ($54) each month.
"I've started sending my youngest son to school as I earn enough now to meet all the expenses," she said.
Villagers can also charge their mobile phones at the solar station, instead of having to travel to Bahawalpur and back.
The foundation has so far installed solar charging stations in 150 off-grid villages around the country and plans to reach 4,000 villages by 2017.
According to the World Bank, about 44 percent of households in Pakistan are not connected to the grid. More than 80 percent of those are in rural areas.
There, almost half of households use kerosene as a primary or secondary source of lighting, a 2012 World Bank survey found. Some use candles, due to the high cost of kerosene.
"Our target is to provide sustainable energy to far-flung rural off-grid areas of Pakistan, and we especially want to empower women in these areas through the project," said Fiza Farhan, CEO of the Buksh Foundation.
She said the solar lanterns not only are convenient and a source of income for some villagers but also help reduce climate-changing carbon emissions, as each lantern replaces around 500 to 600 liters of kerosene during its 10-year lifespan.
The foundation has a permanent help line at its central office in Lahore to keep in touch with the "Light Ladies" and provide them technical assistance round the clock, Farhan said.
She said dozens of people contact the foundation daily asking for more solar lanterns in their villages and requesting the installation of charging stations in nearby villages.
"More women want to become Light Ladies, but for the moment we have been training only two women in each village," she said, to ensure that each woman makes a decent income once the profits are split.
Qamar-uz-Zaman, a climate change adviser to the sustainable development organization LEAD-Pakistan, said Pakistan's energy shortages could be reduced substantially if the government would provide technical and financial assistance for sustainable development initiatives such as Lighting a Million Lives.
Pakistan faces a year-round electricity shortfall that hits around 7,000 megawatts in the summer. The country's rural areas often suffer blackouts of more than 14 hours a day while urban areas can experience up to 10 hours a day without power.
To tackle the crisis, the government needs to support off-grid solar projects and encourage people to use renewable energy sources to decrease the stress on the national grid, said Zaman.
"The government can subsidize the projects by claiming international climate financing and reaching out to international donors to fund them," he said.
Gul Muhammad, 62, a farmer in the village outside Bahawalpur, can attest to the benefits of solar energy. The lantern he hires from one of the "Light Ladies" has allowed him to cut the amount of kerosene he uses to light his farm, saving him 350 rupees ($3) each month.
The availability of cheap, portable light also means he can irrigate his farmland during dusk and dawn, times of day that previously were too dangerous due to the presence of snakes in the area.
"I can now work three to four hours extra on my farmland," he said. "And this is helping increase my income too."
• Reporting by Aamir Saeed; editing by Jumana Farouky and Laurie Goering. This article was originally published by the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which covers humanitarian news, climate change, women's rights, trafficking, and corruption. Visit www.trust.org/climate.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2015/0806/In-Pakistan-solar-lamps-turn-women-into-entrepreneurs?cmpid=addthis_twitter

This "Mad Genius" Organic Farmer's Ideas Are Working. He's Grossing $100K An Acre...

This article is adapted from “The Drought Fighter” by Todd Oppenheimer, originally published in Craftsmanship Magazine (www.craftsmanship.net). Photos by Christopher D. Cook.

We need GMOs to feed the world like a fish needs dry land. A controversial farmer in California is proving that a veritable bumper crop can be had using new farming methods that don’t require GMO pesticides, herbicides, or even weeding, and require 10 times less water than the average farm. The best part – he earned $100K per acre last season without even harvesting all of his land.

How does he do it?

What kind of super-fertilizer allows Paul Kaiser to grow so much food on a mere 8 acres? Lot’s of rotten food scraps and rotten plants – otherwise known as compost. And he uses loads of it.
He uses farming practices both old, and cutting-edge-new so well that agricultural specialists from University of California at Davis who have tested his top soil can drive a four-foot steel pole all the way through his fields. This, as opposed to most parts of California, where it would hit infertile hard-pan in less than 12 inches.
Last year, Kaiser’s farm located in Sonoma Valley, CA grossed more than $100,000 an acre, too. This is ten times the average for most farmers of this area, even in lucrative wine-country.
His farm is no mega-farm, either. At just under 8 acres, he is beating even other large organic farms because the soil is still so damaged in other conventional and organic farms alike.
He is certainly out-performing Big Ag methods of farming as his unique farming practices have turned the soil into a goldmine.

The 3 Rules of Soil Health

Kaiser follows what he calls the 3 main rules of soil health: Keep roots in the ground as much as possible, keep the soil covered as much as possible, and disturb the soil as little as possible.
Kaiser also doesn’t plow his fields (which means a lot less work) and he uses around 10 times less water than his peers. His neighbors still run sprinklers, but he waters for about an hour a week, using almost exclusively drip irrigation. This means that while California is still recovering from a drought, most farmers are watering the air – since most of the water is lost to evaporation. Kaiser is watering – how novel an idea – just his plants.
Many California farmers recently spent millions tanking in water to try to save their crops, while Kaiser just made a healthy annual salary for even most high-paid lawyers. Water was being sold on the black market for ridiculous prices, but you can bet Kaiser wasn’t paying them.
Kaiser uses a thick, acrylic blanket to keep both soil and compost piles covered. Most farmers, if the cover soil at all, us immense plastic sheets, which end up each year in the landfill. “These blankets last me 10 years!”
Kaiser is a bit of a mad genius, and a dreamer, too. He rattles off statistics at local talks he gives about exactly how he grows so sustainably, often including surprising facts. For example, he leaves his roots in the ground after harvest to feed the worms. He sounds a bit like a Martin Luther King for growing green:

“Sustainable farming methods are just one corner,” he said. “Economic sustainability is another, and social sustainability is the third.”
During a recent Sunday farmers’ market, representatives of several different agricultural organizations approached Kaiser, each asking him for advice. Now, when billed for talks, he often packs the house.
Kaiser envisions small farms near every city around the globe, even in the most dry, arid climates, and with the proof of his own sweat, and soil, I believe his dream is possible.

 http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/14219-organic-farmer-grosses-100k-acre.html?c=JER

Beginning married life with a charitable act!