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Pathbreakers: Harish Hande, MD of Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO)
Unable to ignore the poorest of the poor who live in abject darkness, Harish Hande decided to put his Master's in solar power to good use. Today, the 44-year-old MD of Solar Electric Light Company or SELCO, retains the same inclusive elan while reminiscing how his company continues to light up lives at the bottom of the pyramid.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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Kenya: Total’s Solar Kits Target Poor Households
Total Kenya is banking on portable solar kits for lighting and charging of mobile phones to break into the Kenyan renewable energy market.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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From the Sun (Bypassing the Grid) to the BoP Consumer
Taking its name from the amount of time it takes sunlight to reach earth (yes, 8 minutes and 19 seconds), Eight19 is one of the many companies working to deliver solar energy to the 1.6 billion people of the BoP in need.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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SELCO: A Business, Ongoing Case Study in Solar-Powered Social Impact
SELCO, a social enterprise traditionally focused on providing solar energy to the rural underserved, has launched a new urban model in India that has helped electrify a set of slum-dwelling households in Bangalore. The early success has been less about the feat of solar power in slums, and more about creating a ripple effect for social impact.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment
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Malaria Scientist Celebrates Success After 24 Years
For Joe Cohen, a GlaxoSmithKline research scientist who has spent 24 years trying to create the world's first malaria vaccine, Tuesday, October 18, 2011 goes down as a fabulous day.
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- solar
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Esther Duflo Bribes India’s Poor to Health
Rajasthan is India’s desert state, an often inhospitable place where per capita income averages around $1.77 per day. Poverty like that--understanding it and imagining ways to fix it--is what Esther Duflo lives for. Since 2003, her Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (named for a wealthy Saudi donor), or J-PAL, has conducted 240 randomized, controlled trials of specific ways to help the poor. She tests poverty solutions the way medical researchers test new drugs, which can violate the p...
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- solar
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Serving the Trillion Dollar BoP Energy Market
Not everyone wants to spend their weekend in a conference room discussing challenges like benchmarking low-cost solar home lighting systems, finding the right business model, and raising the seed capital. But for the 11 social entrepreneurs gathered with experts and the CSTS Clean Energy Sector team, there’s no place else we would have rather been.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Vaccines Need to Reach the Poor in Middle-income Countries Too
The world’s top aid donors met on Monday in London to replenish the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), netting a remarkable $4.3bn in the midst of a historic recession, to scale up immunisation programmes in the run-up to 2015 and the mill...
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- solar