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Key points
- Without solar lighting, marginalized women may spend a third of their income on kerosene lighting.
- With free solar light, the money saved can go into generating income.
- Alleviating poverty is a first step in eliminating human trafficking.
- Watts of Love is providing solar lighting in 51 countries.
Nancy Economou, has an unusual yet highly effective approach to combatting human trafficking. Her charity, Watts of Love, uses solar-powered lights to create economic empowerment. Increased economic security means less vulnerability to trafficking.
Watts of Love is now helping provide solar lighting in 51 countries. So far, these solar-powered lights have affected close to 400,000 lives.
Economou likes to point out that when a woman has access to free solar lighting and the economic literacy training her organization provides, several things happen that make her and her children less vulnerable to trafficking.
- Having solar lighting means greater financial security. Without solar lighting, a marginalized woman would often be spending as much as a third of her income on kerosene for light.
- The money a woman spent on lighting before having her solar light can now be spent in ways that can help her escape poverty. Many use the added income to send their children to school or start a business.
- Her health and her children’s health is improved. Indoor air pollution contributes to 1 out of every 14 deaths in the developing world and kerosene ingestion is the leading cause of childhood poisonings. Improved health translates into better capacity to earn a living and escape poverty.
Escaping poverty makes all the difference. Economou points out that women in extreme poverty too often find that they can’t feed their children. They may find that they have no other choice than to sell a daughter to a local brothel or allow her to be trafficked. Something as simple as a solar-powered light can change the dynamic.
Another positive benefit is that the economic security lighting can generate means fewer child brides. Poverty, for example, can force a family to allow their 12-year-old daughter to marry an elderly man in return for a goat—something Economou has herself witnessed.
Being a child bride most often means the end of a girl’s education. The girl will have no ability to support herself, and the conditions she’ll live under are usually so dire that that child brides are included in the definition of human trafficking.
Solar lighting often changes that outcome. A Ugandan grandmother Economou met was struggling to feed her 12 grandchildren. But once she had a solar-powered light, the money saved on kerosene enabled her, in seven days, to buy a hen. She hard-boiled the eggs from the hen, sold them at market, and bought another hen.
In five months, she was able to buy a sow and now gets to sell the piglets. Instead of being in survival mode, she is now a thriving entrepreneur.—and paying for school for all 12 grandkids, including their books and uniforms.
Economou’s dream for attacking human trafficking doesn’t stop there. She believes free solar-powered lighting is so inexpensive and so powerful that it can be part of the global effort to eliminate trafficking, starting in Bangladesh, organized by the UBS Optimus Foundation.
Bangladesh, she says, would be a perfect case for studying the impact of solar lights. According to a 2019 study, 27,595,417 people in Bangladesh live without electricity. Bangladesh ranks 82nd in the world for electrification.
According to a 2016 study, 23,883,752 people in Bangladesh live on less that $1.90 per day. The price of kerosene in Bangladesh is currently $0.93 per liter, and kerosene is what poor Bangladeshis use for lighting.
“Watts of Love has the proven ability to alleviate poverty in a single generation, which is the first step in ending human trafficking," says Economou.." When the most vulnerable people have financial opportunity, they have the tools to protect their children from selling their bodies.”
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