Rural Retail
Nuru Light screens and selects entrepreneurs from local cooperatives to operate their own microfranchises. Located in the customers’ communities, each microfranchise operator (‘entrepreneur’) will sell lights and then charge the customers a small fee to recharge the lights using the POWERCycle pedal generator. Each entrepreneur earns over $3 per day in profit. Such an income launches an entrepreneur comfortably out of poverty, giving them 3-4 times the national average income, while still saving customers 85% on lighting. Because Nuru Light targets female entrepreneurs, the earnings are more likely to be spent on the education, health, and nutrition of their children.
Urban Retail
In cities and slums throughout the developing world, millions have access for only a few hours a day. We have designed the POWERGrid for these situations, with which families can charge lights when they have access to power and use the lights when the power is out. Microfinance banks will give microloans to families to buy five lights and one POWERGrid charger.
Donor-Based
For particularly vulnerable groups with no source of income, such as refugees, Nuru Light started a charity called Lights for Life International. The organization donates lights to school children in refugee camps who have no income and therefore, no ability to buy lights. These children’s only chance to escape the refugee camps is to do well on the national exam and earn a scholarship to university. Without a light, however, they cannot study. So, by providing students with Nuru Lights, you can give these children a future.