(Above: Esperance Yanfashije who along with her husband Martin Uwayezu, run a Nuru business together. They live and work in Ruhuha Sector, Bugesera District, Eastern Province, Rwanda. Image credit: John Briggs)
[Editor's note: This post was written by Adeena Schlussel, associate at KIND Snacks, and was originally featured on Next Billion.net. Nuru Energy is a finalist in the Changemakers Powering Economic Opportunity: Creat a World That Works competition.]
Nuru Energy faces the same problems that many alternative energy initiatives in the developing world face: kerosene is a dangerous, polluting, expensive, and non-renewable source of energy that leaves many families in poverty, some injured, and others in the dark. Nuru Energy, however, approaches this familiar problem in its own unique way with the Nuru Light and the Power Cycle.
The Nuru Light, seed funded by the World Bank in 2008 and serving East Africa and India, is innovative in its design; each battery re-charge affords a consumer 26 hours of light, which translates into five to seven days of use. Another of Nuru's assets is that it's designed to be incredibly versatile. Because energy is needed for all sorts of circumstances and occasions, Nuru's designers created the product so it can be work on one's forehead, perched on a flat surface, mounted on a wall or channelled though a plastic or glass bottle.
But what is an energy providing product without a dependable and continuous source of energy? The founders of Nuru Energy created the PowerCycle to address this necessity. The PowerCycle is a generator that recharges Nuru's products as the pedals are pumped. In 20 minutes, one peddler can recharge 5 lights, and with new functionality, it can re-charge cell phones as well. The PowerCycle's manual energy generation avoids the various pitfalls of weather dependant sources of energy such as sunlight and wind power.
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