Laís founded Litro de Luz São Paulo in 2015, with Rodrigo joining in 2016, to bring light sources to communities without regular electrification. It was estimated in 2022 that 600,000 people in Brazil continue to lack electricity [1]. Litro de Luz Brasil is a chapter of the global Liter of Light movement, and uses solar-powered solutions to provide access to electricity in communities such as the Favelas, Indigenous and in the Amazon region. The organisation also focuses on community engagement, teaching community members how to build its solutions to ensure that communities can maintain and replicate their light sources in the future. These community members become Litro de Luz ambassadors.
Laís attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, Manchester, 2022 and Belfast, 2023. During her first Summit, she established a relationship with the Audi Environmental Foundation, helping them scale their work in the Amazon. Rodrigo attended the One Young World Summit in Belfast, 2023, after which the team has established three other connections and are in the early stages of collaborating with other organisations.
Litro de Luz Brasil has impacted 25,000 people through the installation of 4,000 solutions, including 2,350 hand lamps, 1,600 street lights, and 50 internal house solutions. Additionally, Rodrigo and his team of volunteers and community ambassadors provide sustainability workshops to companies and students during which they teach participants how to assemble their solution and provide guidance on generating social impact. Litro de Luz Brasil’s solutions facilitate economic development, education, and improved health outcomes in rural and underserved communities, contributing to a reduction in the use of damaging kerosene and diesel light sources.
“It was really important for us to have One Young World showing and recruiting people and to have this partnership with Audi because this project, this relationship with Audi helped us to reach more communities in the Amazon rainforest in 2022. And this project was so successful that now Audi supported us this year and we also made another installation in another isolated island near São Paulo. And we are planning more projects in the future. So One Young World was really important to have a huge partnership here in Litro de Luz.”
