Innovative use of Luci Lights
Ms. Mamata Patra, a 23 year old Post Graduate Diploma holder in Computer Application started a tuition centre in her village in the State of Odisha. Due to frequent power outage, the lady was finding it difficult to continue her vocation of running the tuition centre, which is a livelihood generation activity for her. Trijanga is a place where electricity supply is very poor as compared to the consumption rate. Sometimes the power cut exceeds 24 hours, which affects the normal life of the residents. As a result most of the times she had to resort to use the traditional “Dibri” which uses kerosene as a fuel during her tution hours. Also, this was not economical and safe in the long run. As “Dibri” is one of the major source of indoor air pollution and causes various health hazard due to the high rate of black carbon emission.
Few months back our JSF team from Jajpur has distributed inflatable solar LUCI lights in Trijanga village, in order to promote the use of clean & renewable energy. Mamata was very encouraged to see the Luci lights and bought the Jindal Stainless subsidized MPowered solar lights as a suitable alternative to the power cuts and she found her seven students have suddenly after her recent procurement started to attend regularly and there is a change in the students’ interest.
The shift to Luci solar lights has been a great achievement for both the young lady as also her students with additional students flocking the tuition centre. The reason for the increase in numbers are twofold as informed by Ms. Patra – one because there is an alternative facility available for learning with frequent power cuts and secondly her small tuition centre, which earlier used to be filled with smoke due to the usage of kerosene lamps and diyas, did not have to be the preferred source of lighting the dingy room. It will also be prudent to mention that purchasing kerosene in that environment by itself is a challenge besides being a drain on her meager income.
Young Mamta has been so encouraged with usage of the Luci solar inflatable lights that she has since purchased additional two units for her personal use and is rather happy with the add on benefits of using clean energy with limited maintenance costs. She even mentioned in one of her interactions that “Luci light is a great product with the potential to make great impacts in the areas where electricity is still a challenge”.
