An international team of students delivers 236 lights to Cambodia and Ghana
Students in France sell baked good to raise money and awareness about the need for lights.
October 2012
This summer, Challenge Your World, an international platform for university students, partnered with One Million Lights to bring light up households in Cambodia and Ghana. The international team of ambassadors held fundraisers all around the globe. They coordinated bake sales in Canada and France, a charity dance in the Czech Republic, and the sale of recycled plastics crafts and friendship bracelets in Brunei. With their combined effort the team raised over $2000.
Their first distribution in July and was led by two young women, Fatin Arifin and Khairunnisa Ash’ari, who traveled from Brunei to Cambodia to distribute 140 Nokero N200 lights. In partnership with the Organization for Building Community Resources, a non-profit organization in Phenom Phen, the team distributed lights to a village in the Sam Rong Tong District of Kampong Speu and the village of Lvea Aem in Kandal province. Both communities, identified with the help of the grassroots level NGO, would significantly benefit from additional productive hours in the evening that clean solar lighting could provide.
Light was delivered in the village of Lvea Aem village, Cambodia, where annual floods harm crops, and cause younger generations to leave home in search of work in the garment factories.
Shortly after, in August, ambassadors Patricia Ida Annan distributed 96 Nokero N200 lights across three communities in Ghana. The distribution primarly was focused on students and providing them with clean lighting in the evenings to study and pursue their education. According to Patricia, “my prime motivation for doing this is to help deprived communities to get access to lights for their activities at night. I am motivated to help innocent children to get lights for their home, work and studies at night as a boost to their educational development.”
The distribution not only benefited the community but also provided learning experiences for the ambassadors. Patricia, working for the Human Rights Network in Ghana, felt she provided aid for members of her community. “For my career as a human rights activist, I believe this is just one of the rights entitled to the people in Okyereko which in my region are being overlooked.” The Challenge Your World Global Ambassador team impacted over a thousand lives in Cambodia and Ghana.
For our Brunei ambassador Khairunnisa, “I want to do my part to make poverty history. It starts with little acts like this to help improve one’s life. ”
Students and teachers of Saman Abotar park in Ghana playing with their new solar lights.
