Simon Doble – Light, Energy and Education
Episode 17
Simon Doble is an inventor, an entrepreneur, a CEO, and one of the kindest and most compassionate individuals I’ve ever met. The SolarBuddy story is an amazing one. SolarBuddy started because Simon was outraged by the fact that so many people globally were living in energy poverty, and so few knew about it. Energy poverty means a person uses toxic kerosene lamps to cook at night, and it means a student can’t do their homework because they can’t see the pages past sunset. It means that during the evening, very little can be done because there is simply no light – this is a powerful metaphor.
As I aptly (albeit accidentally)say in this episode, you’ll “see the light” when you hear Simon’s story. Simon is inspiring – he saw a problem, he invented a solution, and then he created a social enterprise around it. Not only is SolarBuddy wildly successful, it also enables Australians to engage in international development in a brand new way – by creating lights and writing letters, and knowing that those very lights will be held by school students in Papua New Guinea, in South Africa, or in one of 11 other countries. Simon is lighting up lives and connecting people on all corners of the globe – it is development in it’s best form. It’s the sort of development that reminds me why I love what I do.
I hope you love this episode as much as I do – I know I say this every week, but this one’s possibly my favourite yet.
I suggest you listen to this episode alongside Episode 1 with Dr. Gen Nelson – Gen and Simon are great mates and colleagues and work miracles* together in PNG (not actually miracles – just really great work done by really great people!)
