2022 Year in Review

We’ve accomplished SO much in 2022 with you by our side. Thank you for getting low-cost, eco-friendly solar light and power to the farthest reaches of the world. One light, one charger, and one person at a time — you are changing lives. 

By all measures this was our biggest year yet. We distributed 32,350 Lights & Chargers to people in 30 countries. This represented an almost 50% increase in the number of people we were able to help from last year. 

We continued to provide lamps for students in Honduras and Malawi, and we reached new places like Ukraine and the Central African Republic  where there continues to be urgent need due to conflicts and climate change.
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These donations were made possible by the generous support of people like you. This year, you gave online in record numbers. You also supported our inaugural Unite to Light the Night event in Santa Barbara, CA which was our most successful fundraising event to date and raised enough money to change 10,000 lives in a single  weekend! Thank you to all who contributed. 
Continue reading for more details, photos and videos!

Lights Distributed
Unite to Light distributed 28,140 Luke Lights and 4,300 Solar Chargers in 2022. This totals 32,440 units for the year. By the end of  2022 UTL’s total lights distributed over the life of the organization has grown to 200,609 lights and 80 countries. This year we added two countries: Ukraine and the Central African Republic.

Unite to Light the Night
We hosted a three day art festival and fundraiser around the theme of light October 6-8, 2022. We had over 40 pieces of art and welcomed more than 400 guests over the three nights. Between sponsorships, tickets, art sales and donations we raised over $100,000. That’s enough to impact 10,000 lives! Importantly, we met a lot of new friends and significantly increased our presence in the community. Watch the recap here or see photos here. We have plans to hold this event again in 2023. ​

Carbon Offsets: We received a grant from the University of California to implement a light subsidy program over the next three years. We are partnering with Solar Sister in Tanzania for distribution, d.light for the light manufacturing, and the UC for subsidy funding. In 2022 we created our draft project documents and held required Stakeholder consultations. Once the design is verified, we can access the subsidies through the UC and implement the project. We aim to have this started in Q1 2023. 
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We received a separate grant from the Ghanta Family Foundation to rewrite the carbon offset methodology for solar lights to include Black Carbon, a short term climate pollutant. Currently only CO2 and Methane are accounted for. We hired a research engineer to help with this project and are working with both Gold Standard and Verra registries (voluntary markets), as well as exploring the regulatory market requirements.

Gift of Light Partner Program
We continued to host the Gift of Light Partner Program. We only had one round of applications in 2022 because we had less funding and much of our BOGO went to Ukraine. We selected eight organizations to partner with and shipped approximately 1000 Luke Lights and 50 Chargers.

Trekking Ambassadors started a Light Library with Luke Lights in Tanzania.

Key Focus Areas
Education: We made donations to Girl Up Uganda and Arlington Academy in Uganda through the Gift of Light program. International Childcare Ministries continued to be a strong partner and ordered lights three times this year.

Global Health: We partnered with the UNFPA again, this time to send 2,000 Luke Lights to the Central African Republic. They will be delivered to midwives, community healthcare workers, and women and girls seeking services through UNFPA. 

We continued to partner with Community Health Partners Honduras and Ailin finished conducting interviews of our 200 Luke Light recipients. We are working on translating and cataloging those interviews now.

Ailin, with Community Health Partners Honduras, distributing Luke Lights.

Local Health/Homelessness: While COVID-19 has become less of an issue, homelessness has not. We continue to partner with organizations across the country to support our neighbors experiencing homelessness.

Disaster Response: Russia’s war in Ukraine became our biggest focus for the year as we shipped 4,150 Lights/Chargers. We found new partners: NuDay, New Use Energy and Smart Aid Ukraine. We also distributed to Ukraine in collaboration with Direct Relief. 

We responded to hurricanes in Florida and Puerto Rico in partnership with Direct Relief. 

For the third year, we received a grant from the California Fire Foundation to provide Solar Chargers to people in high risk, low income areas so they can be prepared for power outages and wildfires. This year we partnered with Backcountry Communities Thriving in San Diego county for distribution.

A Ukrainian woman received two Luke Lights.

Summary 
With nearly 1 billion people living without electricity, we still have a lot of work to do in 2023 and beyond. We are still making shipments to Ukraine on a regular basis and we have unmet requests for Chargers to our neighbors experiencing homelessness and Lights for  students in Ghana and around the world.  For just $10 we can send a solar light almost anywhere in the world. 
Donate today to spread more light in 2023.

Give Light in 2023