Last month Nokero won the Laudato SI’ Challenge Startup launched by Pope Francis calling humanity to work together in order to address climate change and involuntary migration.
Steve Katasaros, founder of Nokero, will spend the summer in Rome with 12 other entrepreneurs of innovative and sustainable mid-stage startups from various countries who will receive mentorship and equity investment to expand their solution. In December 2017, six startups will be presented at a grand ceremony inside Vatican City!
“The Laudato Si’Startup Challenge inspires a new generation of entrepreneurs to build for-profit, for-purpose companies that address humanity’s biggest challenges in ways that are beneficial to all.”
Nokero’s Solar Lighting Mission – The Founder’s Inspiration and Motivation:
Today, 1.4 billion people still have no access to electricity!
To those of us comfortably ensconced in our technological lairs, surrounded by smartphones, tablets, laptops, and internet-connected refrigerators and thermostats, this simple fact is almost unfathomable.
Ever since humans harnessed fire 400,000 years ago, people have burned fossil fuels to provide lighting at night. Across the developing world today, those without electricity most often rely on fuels like kerosene to provide a source of light. 
Kerosene poses a multitude of financial, safety, and health problems, in addition to increasing dependence on crude oil. Burning kerosene in indoor lamps and appliances releases a number of harmful pollutants, including particulate matter, elemental carbon, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide.
Studies have linked these pollutants to several health issues such as lung disease, respiratory infections, asthma, cancer, cataracts, and possibly tuberculosis. And if that’s not bad enough, kerosene lamps are highly volatile, which means they carry a risk of immediate bodily injury, through poisonings, fires, and explosions!
That’s why I founded Nokero (as in No Kerosene). I saw a simple, affordable way to bring light to millions while eliminating the deleterious impacts of kerosene.
I wanted to not just create a company delivering a useful product, but support a movement towards sustainable lighting and energy in general. In the world of international development, products like our lights are known as Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies (ASETs). Unlike products distributed in the developed world, ASETs cannot simply be placed onto shelves in supermarkets in urban centers. To achieve their purpose, they must reach the places where the Energy Poor live: fringes of urban areas and rural locations in developing nations.
Therefore, we seek local entrepreneurs with established solar power businesses or who desire to start one and distribute the lights. We also partner with non-profit organizations who strategically distribute lights to families, facilitating daily tasks and allowing children to have more time to study! Nokero lights also provide sustainable fishing solutions and safety to natural disaster victims. We also partner with non-profit organizations (such as Project C.U.R.E) to distribute the lights. These organizations have a great understanding of the needs and the best approach to make the lights available to the members of the specific communities they work with.
We originally wanted to create a for-profit distribution channel as profit scales. However, over the years, we have seen that 50% of our products are “AID” and 50% are “PAID”. This means that ½ are given to the end user and ½ are sold to the end user. In both cases, Nokero receives its wholesale price to cover the cost of manufacturing in China plus a margin to cover overhead and a (modest) profit. Nokero is always researching innovative ways to design more efficient and affordable lights. Since 2014 Nokero produced the Nokero N193 (10 lumens), the W100 Work Light (300 lumens), and the world’s most efficient light available today: the Nokero N233 (25 lumens). The lights last about 5 years and come with a 2-year warranty.
Buy donating $10.00 to Nokero while purchasing lights for your own use or as a gift, you will provide light to someone in need.
One light can illuminate several people at once -through the sale and donations of 1.5 million lights Nokero has impacted 7 million lives!
PS (from the PI Editors): Steve was also selected among 33 entrepreneurs who make this world a better place by IdeaMensch , who describes Steve has an innovator who helps people who have big needs, but not big wallets!
To learn more about the Laudato Si initiative, take the free online SDG Academy course: On Care for Our Common Home. Visit Pure Treasures for more information.
[Photographs Courtesy of Nokero]