We believe every light tells a story and every story is worth telling.

I am going to read some stats for you and pause for a moment, because I want it to sink in. Nearly 1b people around the world today live without electricity. So in effect that means more people live in darkness today than when the first light blub was invented. Doesn’t that just boggle your mind? Light is such a basic need and yet so many people live life without it.

Sometimes you meet strangers who really don’t feel like strangers. They feel like long lost friends who are reconnecting after decades or in this case, lifetimes ago. I cannot quite explain what I felt when I met our next guest, Nancy Economo, at a service summit. You see Nancy was there to talk about her non-for-profit Watts of Love. An organization that aims to light up the world one family at a time. Normally I would have got a brochure and walked away. But something about the way the booth was laid out, the images and even how Nancy was standing there, engaging with everyone who stopped by, just called to me.

We ended up chatting about culture, people and life stories. When I heard more about Watts of Live and how Nancy started this non-for-profit because of an experience that shifted her entire perceptive and life for that matter, I was in awe. I knew I had to connect with her and learn about how she went from selling high-end jewelry for Cartier to establishing a secular organization that is using solar powered lights to bring safe, sustainable lighting sources for those living without basic access to electricity.Nancy is an inspiration. She is so down to earth and passionate about her work. While accompanying her husband on a business trip to the Philippines, Nancy volunteered to help serve at a local feeding program. There she met a young girl severely burned and scarred by a kerosene lamp – the only source of light for so many in the developing world.

As she looked around, she witnessed not only burns and injuries from kerosene lamps, but also children left unattended in complete darkness while their parents worked at night. Nancy could not imagine her own five sons living in such extreme conditions so she decided at that moment that she would be the one to make a difference – be the change. Recalling that experience she says, “Then and there, I turned to my husband and told him I think I am meant to bring solar lights to these people”, irrespective of the fact that she knew nothing about the technology, its workings or even how to go about doing something like this – in a part of the world she had no experience with.And to go from that to an organization that has worked in 30 countries, delivered 20K lights and impacted 142K lives is quite something. And Nancy shares so much of her own life journey, her experiences and her dreams for the future, that I know you are going to walk away from this podcast interview feeling motivated and inspired to be an agent for change – in a way that feels right for you.

{Photos by Watts Of Love}

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