GravityLight test by Miatta and her children, Liberia
caroline angus
Meet Miatta: she lives with 4 children in the outskirts of Monrovia in Liberia. Liberia has one of the lowest electricity access rates in the world: less than 2% of the population.
Miatta sometimes uses a small diesel generator to create light in her house, but only when money allows. On most evenings they use small desk lamps that run on batteries. According to Miata the quality of the lamps is low; they break quickly and the light that they generate is not very suitable to study or to work by.
Miatta attaches GravityLight to a beam in her home.
At first Miatta was sceptical about GravityLight because of her experience with the small desk lamps but:
“We were all surprised how bright the GravityLight and SatLights were in comparison to the battery lights.”
Mattia's experience with GravityLight also highlighted a couple of features that were useful and some improvements we could make too:
- There was confusion between the two hooks, which needed to go on which side? Could we colour code them to show the correct set up?
- We had provided a spare zip tie to attached GravityLight, which our 'trial facilitator', Lachlan thought was a great idea:
“Nice work including a second hanging strap - I fully expect Miatta will want to move her light once she’s had a play with it.”
- We also hear that Miatta’s 5 year old son enjoyed GravityLight too; trying to use it as a swing! Having heard this a couple of times from families around the world, we knew this would be important to consider when designing GL02!
Thank you Miatta and Lachlan for sharing your thoughts and experience of GL01!
Find out about the improvements we've made for the next generation GravityLight, GL02 - available through our Indiegogo campaign now!