OpenSolar Partnership
OpenSolar, a software company focused on empowering solar installers with the world’s most accurate and entirely free solar design and sales platform, recently announced a new partnership with Empowered by Light.
OpenSolar is committing 1% of its annual revenue to Empowered by Light projects in order to deploy solar and other renewable energy solutions to vulnerable communities around the world. Each year, our organizations will jointly select specific projects to complete, based on OpenSolar’s conviction that nobody should be left behind as the world transitions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
For 2022, we selected two very poor and remote communities in eastern Zambia near the border with Mozambique. Both Undi and Chutika have no access to electricity which profoundly limits people’s quality of life. Community members currently collect and haul water from the river in order to irrigate their crops and use water for drinking, cooking and sanitation. This greatly restricts their ability to successfully grow vegetables and a wide variety of crops. It also increases the likelihood of dangerous--sometimes deadly, interactions with elephants, crocodiles and hippos.
OpenSolar’s 2022 donation has funded the installation of solar powered water pumps, water storage and irrigation systems in both communities, designed to reduce the time community members spend collecting and transporting water, improve safety, boost economic development, and increase health and sanitation. In each community, a group of 20 women oversee the pump operation and agricultural efforts.
With your gift, you can help the school-age children of Undi and Chutika study better and help community members receive safer and more effective medical care by supporting us in installing solar power on the schools and health clinics in the two communities.