In early 2019, BRIGHT Products went to Kakuma Refugee Camp to conduct field testing of our solar products. The first solar products arrived at Kakuma Refugee Camp in 2016 thanks to the IKEA Foundations “Brighter lives for refugees” campaign, and now over 54.900 solar lamps from BRIGHT have been distributed in the camp.

Mathilde and Olivier from Team BRIGHT traveled to Kakuma to talk to inhabitants in the camp and ask them how and when they used our solar lamp SunBell. They arranged big group sessions as well as one on one interviews in order to get statistics on how SunBell has been used since 2016.

Kakuma Refugee Camp

Kakuma Refugee Camp was established in 1992 and by end November 2018 there were 186,692 registered refugees and asylum-seekers in the camp. It is located in north western Kenya close to the border to Uganda and South-Sudan.

Morneau Sheppel Girls Secondary School

During our stay we visited the Morneau Sheppel Girls Secondary School in Kakuma, which is a boarding school with 350 students. Every student got a SunBell solar lamp in order to study more with the assistance of light in the evenings. The students got the SunBells approximately two years ago, before this they were using cheap torches run on disposable batteries from the local market.

The students often share the light from the solar lamps and use it mainly to:

• Move around school at night
• Read in dormitories
• Study before sunrise and after sunset for exam preps
• Reading in class rooms for late/early classes

Interviewing families using SunBell

In Kakuma we interviewed families that has used the SunBell solar lamp over the last years.

These families have used the SunBell from late 2016 or early 2017 and still uses it today. They inform us that they have used the SunBell for activities such as:

• General room lighting
• Reading
• Walking safely outside
• Cooking
• Putting kids to bed
• Charging mobile phones
• Going to the toilet

Many of the families mention looking for dangerous animals such as snakes and scorpions as important tasks performed with the solar lamps. Previously they have used torches with disposable batteries as their main light source before receiving the SunBell solar lamp.

Trips such as the one to Kakuma Refugee Camp are important in order to collect relevant user data and habits. Team BRIGHT regurlarly travel the globe to conduct field testing and interviews to continue achieving a high product quality and to be able to alter new products in the future.