Rappler Talk: Can Filipino innovators compete on the world stage?

Millions of Filipinos and people around the world do not have light access; that is, they do not get enough light in their homes or in their communities. Picture this problem for a moment. Having little to no light would affect the most mundane of tasks, such as cooking dinner, all the way up to most complex, such as navigating through your neighborhood.

Indeed, access to light directly correlates to a person’s quality of life. Social entrepreneur Illac Diaz has been addressing this problem through Liter of Light, which distributes an open source bottle light made from nothing more than a plastic bottle, some water, and chlorine. That the bottle light can be sourced from materials found in any neighborhood means that these can be easily created en masse. (READ: Illac Diaz and lighting up communities)

Diaz has lit up hundreds of communities around the Philippines and in the world with the bottle light and he hopes to do more this year, which has been marked as the International Year of Light. On a larger picture, Diaz also hopes to show that Filipino innovators and social entrepreneurs can successfully address some of the biggest problems facing the world today.

Are Filipino innovators ready to compete on the world stage? – Rappler.com