Hello and welcome to Mindfulness Plus. I'm your host, Thomas Mekonki. Thanks for downloading us today.

We have got a special episode for you today.

I think I say that almost every week, but I really mean it this week.

It's a special topic, and it begins with a story, as many episodes on Mindfulness Plus do.

So this happened about 10 years ago. I was talking to my friend Angie, who's a really

talented businesswoman. And she was talking about a project that some of her friends were launching

on the African continent. They had identified this place of need in the African society,

and they came up with a really brilliant business plan that Angie's telling me about.

So it goes something like this.

Throughout the African continent, there are hundreds of millions of people

who are off the power grid, and they need power for

their basic daily needs like ourselves. Think about when the sun goes down and there are chores

to do around the house. They need some light. Think of young students throughout Africa who need to work on their homework before bedtime, but don't have any light so that they can't study.

So light, it's this precious thing that in the developed world we often take for granted.

This group of talented social

enterprises, entrepreneurs, they came up with this plan that they were going to distribute

solar powered lamps throughout the continent. And they got a prototype of solar powered lamps going,

and they started to distribute them.

What's brilliant about these is that they replace kerosene lamps that are very common throughout Africa.

And kerosene lamps, they burn dirty.

They pollute a lot, so it can lead to serious health hazards burning a kerosene lamp within a small

space, which many people do in their small living spaces in Africa. So the kerosene lamps are bad for

...