For many villages in Odisha, an erratic supply of electricity is a part of daily life. But the state’s Pondikote village has successfully overcome this handicap, ushering in a solar technology revolution.

An IIT Mumbai initiative has lit up homes here with Solar Urja Lamps (SoUL). Made by the women and young students here, these solar-powered lamps were distributed throughout the village, replacing paraffin candles and kerosene lamps.

Students were given the lamps at a subsidised rate in a bid to counter the high rate of school dropouts owing to the lack of electricity to study at night. Fuelled by the SoUL project, 19-year-old Tilotama Jani decided to fulfil her dream of becoming a teacher and started a tuition centre for students, using the solar-powered lamps to study. As a resident of the village, she had to deal with insufficient lighting to study during her time in school, but she decided to help change things for her students (video below).

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The SoUL initiative, according to their website, has already crossed their aim of distributing one million solar lamps in rural India, having distributed 10,60,847 SoULs till date.