Education Access
Study lights built by the children who need them
Aondoaver Kater Emmanuel runs Little Lights Big Dreams, which teaches children to build affordable DIY study lights, and the International Baccalaureate Global Youth Action Fund awarded it US$1,500 to begin workshops in schools.
About 85 million Nigerians lack access to electricity, a World Bank figure that Aondoaver Kater Emmanuel cites, and around 65% of Nigeria's public primary and junior secondary schools do not have electricity. He grew up in Nigeria with what unreliable electricity meant for education. There were evenings, he says, when home was too dark to read, finish homework or prepare for examinations. "Like many children in our community, we would walk to a nearby telecommunications mast and study under its security lights because it was the only reliable source of light we could find," he says.
"Those moments stayed with us," he says. Little Lights Big Dreams is what came of them, run by Aondoaver together with Sewuese Alexandra Aondoaver: a youth-led initiative that teaches children in underserved communities how to build affordable DIY study lights from simple, locally available materials, so they can keep studying when the electricity is not there.
“For many children around the world, studying at night is as simple as switching on a light. For us, it wasn’t.”
Aondoaver Kater Emmanuel
The workshops are hands-on. Children assemble their own lights, and as they do, he says, they begin to see themselves as young inventors capable of solving real problems in their communities. "We want every participant to leave with both a working study light and a renewed belief in their own potential," he says.
The project is already running. The International Baccalaureate Global Youth Action Fund awarded it US$1,500 to begin delivering workshops in schools, and Aondoaver, a student at Athans Model College in Makurdi, is implementing it with that support now.
The long-term plan is to go beyond schools and reach children living in Internally Displaced Persons camps across Benue State, where he says the educational challenges are often even greater. "This is only the beginning," he says. "We want a future where no child has to stand under a streetlight or a telecommunications mast just to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson."