By Quinlan Bohannon Having sufficient time is essential for maintaining and improving all areas of life, including health, employment, education and personal well-being. However, individuals around the world face significant time deprivations, often due to unpaid...
By Quinlan Bohannon Benin, a small West African country, is making significant strides towards a sustainable, energy-secure future. With only 57% of its population currently having access to electricity, Benin ranks low in energy consumption among African nations. The...
The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF)'s executive director, Bob Freling, recently appeared on the Eco-Logic podcast, where he discussed the transformative power of solar—and his personal journey to leading the charge against energy poverty. Bob reflects on SELF’s...
What does it mean to live without electricity? For nearly 1 billion people worldwide, energy poverty is more than just a statistic—it’s a daily reality that limits health, education, and economic opportunity. On a recent episode of the Utopia is Now podcast, SELF’s...
The Great Power Shift: Decentralization, Reparations, and the Fight for Energy Justice By Robert Freling When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, it didn’t just tear roofs off homes and flood city streets. It wiped out the island’s centralized electrical grid,...
Decentralized Solar Can Help End Water and Food Insecurity By Robert Freling Two billion people lack access to safe drinking water today. The impacts are dire — on human health, on food security, on gender equality, and more. When we look at who lacks clean water, the...
Gorudubu! By Elizabeth Wilder Joy may not be the first word that springs to mind when Westerners think about electrical power, but gorudubu (“joy” in the Bariba language) describes the feelings of the 40,000 adults and children benefiting from a new solar...
Around the world, nearly one billion people lack safe, reliable energy—impacting lighting, literacy and education, water and food supply, communication and technology, healthcare, trade, and the economy, social programs, and government. Everything. What the UN...
SELF Executive Director Bob Freling was recently interviewed by Global Citizen writer, Brandon Wiggins, about the need to bring clean, affordable solar electricity to the world’s most vulnerable communities that have little hope of ever getting connected to the...
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