BEFORE

• Uses a wooden boat to travel to school alone

• Nighttime studying via kerosene or no studying at all

• Must row home with nothing but moonlight to guide her

AFTER

• Safer at night during her trip home

• Can study longer with a clean light

• Students with light are more likely to attain formal education

Story

We’ve heard countless stories of children making their way home from school after sunset without a light to guide their way. What we had never heard before, though, is Arevaloy Simpal’s means of finding her way home. This girl not only travels from school alone, but she rows herself across a dark lake every night in a little wooden boat to the tiny Filipino island where her family lives.

This kind of commitment to education by a child is mind-boggling… and deeply inspiring. Acquiring an education past middle school is challenging enough in the remote areas of the Philippines, without having to traverse solo through unlit waters at night.

Fortunately, Arevaloy is one of the lucky students to receive a light, which brings her the obvious added security in her nightly travels and adds to the long list of benefits that solar lights bring to families in extreme poverty.