{"id":47870,"date":"2018-06-18T13:46:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T17:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=47870"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:55:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:55:44","slug":"shine-a-light-lucky-iron-fish","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/shine-a-light-lucky-iron-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Simple Solutions Shine a Light in Developing Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Simple Solutions Shine a Light in Developing Countries\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

A lone silhouette materializes on a dusty horizon, the weight of a shattered life on his back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a second. And a third . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They’re striding desperately \u2013 inexorably \u2013 toward the Dadaab refugee camp, in northeastern Kenya. Among Earth’s most hopeless places, for decades it has offered at least some respite from war, famine and strife bedeviling east Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Simple<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each of its 250,000 residents has a story, and few will have happy endings. Most will eventually return to the unstable political situations that drove them here. A lucky few will be resettled to western countries. Children scarcely stand a chance. For girls, the odds are even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While taking stock of a struggling World University Service of Canada<\/a> scholarship program, Carleton’s Interim President Alastair Summerlee<\/a> visited Kenya’s Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps. The program sponsored promising students’ studies in Canada, with a path to citizenship. But scholarship recipients were overwhelmingly male and, when he visited, Summerlee saw why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was startling to realize many girls were expected to find firewood and collect water,” Summerlee says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“Even if families allowed them to go to school, they had to make up the time they’re not collecting firewood.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Without electricity, they couldn’t study after sunset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I simply said: ‘We need to establish a solar lamp program.’ I came home with the idea to raise $10,000 for solar lamps. We’d call it Shine a Light.”<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Simple<\/figure>\n\n\n

Shine a Light Burns Bright<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Bright idea, but would it work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Several years later, I went back, and was stunned to find the number of girls in school had gone up, the number of girls winning scholarships had gone up. I remember saying: ‘What happened?’ They looked at me as if I was completely mad, and said, the solar lamp program. I had no idea it might have that impact.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shine a Light went from raising $10,000 to $100,000. The United Kingdom stepped up with \u00a325 million and the Canadian International Development Agency put in $5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n