Smiling Through Light (STL) receives funding from EA Foundation to accelerate action to ensure that rural communities in Sierra Leone have access to clean energy and electricity.
The EA Foundation was established in 2021 by the co-founders of Energy Aspects, a data & intelligence company headquartered in the United Kingdom. The EA Foundation has been set up to improve the lives of disadvantaged communities around the world, with a particularly focus on improving access to education and basic services, relieving poverty and promoting environmentally sustainable development. Their goal is to achieve a tangible and lasting positive impact on the world by engaging respectfully with innovative partner organisations and local communities. To date, the EA Foundation has received over £5 million of donations, which it will distribute over the coming years.
“EA Foundation is excited to embark on this new partnership with Smiling Through Light (STL). We are inspired by STL's commitment to exploring innovative approaches to drive increased access to solar energy for rural communities in Sierra Leone. We look forward to the lessons this project will generate and the impact it will have at both individual and community levels.” said Richard Bronze, Chair – Board of Trustees, EA Foundation.
Mobile money is transforming the landscape of financial inclusion in developing countries, leapfrogging the provision of formal banking services whilst addressing poverty and inequality. The use of mobile money through PAYG systems allows end-users to pay for their solar technology in small instalments via their mobile phones. This helps ameliorate several areas of market failure in developing economies including lower transaction costs, improved transparency, savings, and privacy & women empowerment. PAYG financing can expand households’ access to financial services enabling them to build transaction histories and meet other household needs.
Through this project we will be opening a new hub in Port Loko, strengthening our Freetown Head Office, selling PAYG Solar Home Systems in rural communities in Port Loko through our network of female sales agents, creating 8 new jobs, supporting our operational expenditures including our digital platforms and systems integration, community engagement event on financial literacy and facilitate wider educational opportunities and promotion of energy access through different marketing channels. The funding will be used to pilot our new hub in Port Loko and share learning and impact from that community about our new PAYG operations.
“This new funding will support Smiling Through Light to deliver on our overall business objectives and excited about opening our new hub in Port Loko.” said Mariama Kamara, Founder & Director. “With the funding of $50,000 already secured from Whole Planet Foundation this will help to leverage all our activities helping the business to scale its operations in Sierra Leone whilst creating impact.”
The funding will focus on education and community engagement as a unique attribute and core element of how we do business. We know that renewable energy projects not only offer a sustainable and clean solution to our energy needs but also provide an opportunity to empower local communities. Community engagement plays a crucial role in the successful implementation of last mile distribution projects. It helps to educate people who are seeing these products for the first time as to what they are, how they work and their benefits. Successful engagement is sensitive to the local context, language and cultural norms. It ensures that the benefits are shared widely, and the concerns of the community are addressed.
Alexandros Germanis, Non-Executive Director of Smiling Through Light said, “The EA Foundation funding is highly catalytic and delivers on a number of high impact outcomes positioning us to scale and grow.”
This grant will support STL in achieving its overall vision of a West Africa where off-grid communities are no longer underserved and have access to clean, reliable, sustainable energy. We see a future in which women can generate income for their families, and remote communities no longer experience extreme poverty.
Learn more about the foundation here: https://www.ea-foundation.org.uk
