Hand-delivered: lights for students in India

Most Flash Forward lights reach students through partner organizations that know the schools and households and choose the recipients. These went by hand. During a trip to India, Sanjay Gopi brought finished study lights with him and handed them to students himself. Back home, Gopi helps with light-building and distribution; on this trip, he was the delivery route.

The photographs on this page are from that trip. The students in them are holding the same light student interns build in Bellevue: a 3D-printed case, a 5V solar panel, a LiPo battery, a TP4056 charge board, two 5 mm LEDs and a slide switch, $5.17 in parts. Each light recharges in about 7 hours of sunlight and gives up to about 12 hours of light on a full charge.

Two honest notes about these photos. First, the students pictured were not recipients through Flash Forward's partner programs in Haiti, India or the DR Congo; this delivery was direct. Second, the team does not have the count of lights, the place or the date of the trip, so we do not print them. What remains is what the photos show: a light built by a student, in a student's hands.

However a light travels, the job is the same. It charges in the sun all day and gives the hours back after dark, whether it arrives through a partner's careful selection or in a teammate's hands. A few more hours of study, every night, for a student who would otherwise be finished at sunset. For students, by students, sometimes hand to hand.