By Mariana Escobar Roldán

Litro de Luz started as a class project

At first, Fabiola Valenzuela, a displaced woman from Cauca who arrived to Cali, did not believe a plastic bottle and a liter of water could light up her home at the Comuna 18, in the southern end of town. However, when she installed on her roof top an empty 1,5 liters soda bottle and filled it with 1.5 liters of clean water, the physical effect of refraction of the sun’s rays that entered the bottle convert to light with the power of a 55-watts bulb. Now her kitchen and bathroom, that were in the dark, finally lit up.

In just twenty minutes and for a price estimated at $ 9,000 pesos ($4.80 dollars) anyone can learn the skill to install this tool with a useful life of 10 years and decreasing by up to 40% their electricity bill.

“We work in neighborhoods of extreme poverty conditions that are not even on the map, and in many of the displaced population, inhabits not not have the ability to hire an architect to draw up a proper lighting system in their homes. We are pointing to change public policy around the right to have acces to light,” says Camilo Herrera, whose project has just been recognized by the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) and was awarded by the UN in the last climate convention in Durban.

This article was originally published in spanish by El Espectador. To see full article in Spanish, click here.