Bright Ideas for a Resilient World

Join Green Light New York for an Earth Day celebration, exhibition, and discussion of low carbon lighting solutions and their ability to empower the under-served and strengthen communities in crisis.  NGOs around the world are embracing access to artificial light as a primary component of healthy and vital communities.  Low- and zero-carbon lighting solutions can be hugely important for the more than 1.5 billion people in the world without access to regular electricity and artificial lighting- enabling simple but fundamentally humanizing activities like nighttime reading, and reducing reliance on unhealthy and expensive light sources such as kerosene lamps and wood fires. Here at home, Superstorm Sandy was a potent reminder that our communities are not immune to crisis.  Access to lighting solutions that do not rely on batteries or elaborate and expensive distributed generation systems could dramatically improve the resiliency of our community and provide a massive array of benefits.

What are most effective means of deployment?  Should these solutions be high tech or low tech?  What are the challenges to adoption in the developing world? Can New Yorkers be encouraged to plan for future blackouts and have these solutions on hand?  These questions and many more will be addressed by our speakers.

This event will include a modest exhibit of a variety of low carbon lighting solutions from organizations working throughout the world.

SPEAKERS
Toby Cumberbatch, Cooper Union
Jean-Claude Fouere, Light up the World

Jacques-Philippe Piverger, MPOWERD
Anna Stork, LuminAID

MODERATOR
Yetsuh Frank, Green Light New York

SCHEDULE
4:30 – 5:00: Registration
5:00 – 6:30: Presentation and Discussion
6:30 – 7:00: Reception

A reception with beer and wine will follow audience questions.