Your vision could light the night for people living without electricity. All you have to do is go to Panasonic’s Cut Out the Darkness (COTD) website and design a lantern shade online. One hundred designs (chosen by a poll) will then be made into shades for solar lanterns that COTD will donate to homes and schools in the regions without electricity.
This project, as part of our 100 Thousand Solar Lanterns mission, aims to shine a light on the fact that about 1.3 billion people across the globe live in the areas without electricity, facing health and economic difficulties. For cooking and night-lighting, they burn firewood, dung, and kerosene, which all release smoke. Not only is the smoke a major health-hazard, it also takes a great deal of time for the family to collect wood and dung, and it damages forests, resulting in deforestation in the area. It’s also known that people in the non-electrified areas face serious social problems.
Panasonic plans to help alleviate these issues by providing 100,000 solar lanterns to cut out the darkness. You can be a part of it but you must hurry as entries for the shade design project close soon.
Go to the Cut Out the Darkness website and design your lantern shade.
The 100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project website.