MANILA, OCTOBER 29, 2012 – How does one help thousands of people live better lives? It doesn’t have to be expensive or luxurious. Social entrepreneur Illac Diaz takes something as simple as an empty clear plastic bottle to light up a home.
Using an idea conceived by Brazilian Alfredo Moser, a group of resourceful students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that they could mimic the output of a 40 to 60-watt lightbulb by filling recycled plastic bottles with water and bleach, installing them into small holes cut into a home’s roof, and then sealing them off. Similar to a solar panel’s prism, the mixture absorbs light from the sun, releasing the potential energy in the form of light for the home. Costing next to nothing, the concept capitalizes on readily-available materials and refuse that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill or, worse, polluted a water source.
The program is called “A Liter of Light”. In its first run, with the help of an army of volunteers, 10,000 of these solar lamps were installed throughout Manila and neighboring provinces.
A key part of the project’s awareness campaign was targeting the youth to leverage their regular use of social networking sites, allowing people to engage and participate in the project.
Passion for change
Diaz’s hunger for change goes deeper than bringing light to the underprivileged. Through a project that takes something as simple as an empty bottle, he longs for Filipinos to break the barriers – imagined or otherwise – that prevent them from being seen and heard on the global scene.
Diaz cites his upbringing as having played an important role in his choice to go into the non-profit sector; his mother, Silvana, had weekly feeding programs for street children. Inspired as he was to help the underprivileged by accompanying and assisting his mother during these programs, it was something else entirely that sparked in him a desire to see a Filipino global leader.
“I was at this seminar and the speaker was a young global leader who was a foreigner. I remember thinking, ‘Why are we importing speakers? Why can’t we have somebody who’s a Filipino? We studied Jose Rizal and he’s a great statesman, but how come there’s nobody else? We can’t keep living in the past.”
Perseverance pays off
As a former model, actor and executive for Smart Communications, Diaz may strike one as the epitome of someone to whom everything in life has been handed on a silver platter, having studied urban planning at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology before getting an MA in Public Administration at Harvard University. What most people don’t know, however, is that the road to academic achievement was one paved with disappointment, the end result of repeated application attempts – attempts that were rejected, year after year.
“My scholarship at MIT, I got it on my fourth try; Harvard, it was after my third try,” laughs Diaz.
Filipinos: From beneficiaries to benefactors
Diaz’s quest to turn the Filipinos from “beneficiaries” to “benefactors” led him to look for projects that weren’t just to help the country’s poor but, also, to place Filipinos at the forefront of something that could help everyone in the world, from the grassroots level on up.
Filipinos are notorious for saying, ‘Wala tayong magagawa,’ (There’s nothing we can do) or, ‘Mahihirapan tayo,’ (We’ll have a hard time). Anyone can do it. Compare this with Al Gore’s solar-powered windmills, which only have people saying, ‘Kailan ba maidodonate yan sa atin? Kailan ba tayo matutulungan?’ (When will that be donated to us? When will it help us?). With ‘A Liter of Light’, they can say ‘Ay kayang-kaya ko yan!’ (I can do that!) and you will have empowered the young people.”
With everything that Diaz is doing to affect world change and save the environment, he says: “I just want to show that anybody can do it.”
