Impoverished Kids Love Soccer Ball That Powers Lamp - Until It Breaks Jennifer Collins - PRI's The World
go to original April 16, 2014

The Soccket: A Follow-Up Investigation (Amy Costello)

Across the globe, even in impoverished communities where families can’t afford electric light, there is something you will almost always see: children kicking balls. What if you could harness that youthful energy to generate electricity?

That is the inspiration behind an American invention called the Soccket. It looks like a soccer ball, but it contains a mechanism inside that converts kinetic energy into electric power.

According to its inventors, the ball stores enough energy after just thirty minutes of play to run an LED lamp for three hours, so a child can read at night. Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ashton Kutcher and other celebrities and philanthropists have endorsed the Soccket as a fun product that can promote learning in developing countries.

The idea was dreamed up in 2008 as part of a class project at Harvard University. A couple of students then formed a for-profit company called Uncharted Play and started manufacturing the Soccket. They sell the balls to charities and major corporations that distribute them to impoverished kids.

One of the first large-scale distributions took place in March 2013 in the Mexican state of Puebla. Mexico's biggest TV network, Televisa, gave out around 150 of the balls in a ceremony.

“I'm very happy to be part of this wonderful adventure that is the Soccket,” said Mexican soap opera star Sachi Tamashiro. “These balls ... bring electricity to children so they can do their homework, so they can have light in their houses.”

I wanted to see how things had turned out since then. Did the Soccket balls actually improve the lives of the children who received them? I traveled to Puebla to find out.

Read the rest at PRI's The World

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