The goal of our work is to have a large, positive impact on
our world, where we measure our impact in terms to how it can improve
lives of the most disadvantaged. We believe that perhaps the clearest
indication that the lives of our customers and beneficiaries are
improving is improvements in health and well-being. In addition,
perhaps the starkest, easy-to-measure and easy-to-understand indicator
of well-being is child mortality rates. In areas of the world with the
worst child mortality, more than half of families can have one or more
of their children die before the age of five as they are growing up. We
believe that this has got to change.
We have two sets of beliefs that are relevant to what we hope to
do: The first are moral beliefs: what is right and what is wrong, and
how do we set priorities and goals for our actions. The second set of
beliefs are tactical, strategic and organizational beliefs of what will
and will not be effective in obtaining our ultimate goals. Let's cover
these two sets of beliefs in turn:
Moral Beliefs:
- We believe that all people are equal: no one person or life is any more valuable than any other person or life
- We believe that in an unequal world we must provide a "preferential option for the poor" similar to what is taught by the Catholic Church
- We believe that we all have a responsibility to strive to make the world a better place
in an equal and fair partnership with others who are either interested
in the same goals, or who may benefit from such an improved world
Our two lead staff are not only organizers of positive change, but
we are also scientists. As scientist/organizers our tactics and
strategies attempt to break out of the boundaries of conventional
organizational and economic assumptions and constraints. As we push
this venture forward, we will constantly be creating new organizational
structures and implementation strategies. But these strategies will
always be underpinned by a set of tactical, strategic and organizational
beliefs that will guide our choices in developing our strategies and
methods. - We believe that we must build organizations and networks of trust in
order to effectively and efficiently reach the poorest and most distant
communities in Africa. This means that we have to develop practices
and methods that meet the highest standards of fairness and mutual
respect
- We believe that we must maximize the building of African organizations and productive assets
to get solar systems and electricity to the farthest reaches of Africa
effectively and efficiently. This means maximizing local, distributed
African value-added, and retaining revenue and profits throughout all
levels of our distributional networks to build these assets and
capacities
- We believe that our venture must be financially sustainable and self-sufficient.
This means that pricing and allocation of resources will be done
according to costs and we will not seek subsidies (which distort costs)
or concentrate resources in one part of the organization at the expense
and detriment of other parts of the organization
- We believe that we have to be accountable first and foremost to our beneficiaries and customers.
This means that we will not seek long term subsidies (which make us
accountable to donors rather than customers) and we will structure our
organization to provide services in response to customer demand and
willingness to pay...as this is a clear and scientific indication of
what customers need and want
- We believe in maximizing the amount of health improvement per unit of investment or revenue
because this is the clearest and most objective measure of whether we
are meeting our humanitarian goals. This means we will continually
estimate and forecast the health and mortality-reduction impacts of our
activities and we will seek to maximize the amount of beneficial impact
returned per unit investment from a long-term perspective; and
- We believe that we must maximize our rate of technological and business innovation
in the service of our customers and beneficiaries. This means that we
rapidly revise our solar system designs, product offerings, and business
model in partnership with our partners and collaborators. Currently we
have a 3-6 month product and system design innovation cycle.
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