Luminaid: Shining a light on disasters
BBCLuminaid: Shining a light on disasters 14 February 2012 Clark Boyd Features correspondent The Luminaid is waterproof and can float when inflated Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010 shattered the country’s infrastructure, but for one designer it proved to be an illuminating moment. They designed a number of solutions, large and small, but one idea really stuck; a small solar light they called Luminaid. Stork explains: "We heard that in the tent cities people really wanted something they could easily take to the latrine at night, so it was very handy to have a handle to carry it around." "There's always a balance between keeping the cost really low, and also making it competitive with some of the similar solar lanterns that are out there in terms of its brightness and performance," says Stork. Taking inspiration from the low-cost computer project One Laptop Per Child’s “give one, get one” campaign, they also ran a "give light, get light" campaign – if you bought a LuminAID light for someone in the developing world, you got one for yourself as well.
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