The Portable Light Project (PLP) is a nonprofit initiative that creates new ways to deliver renewable power and light to the developing world in a textile form that integrates flexible photovoltaics and energy efficient solid state lighting … solar textiles. PLP is a project of Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA MATx).

More than 2 billion people live without electricity. PLP allows these people to create and own energy harvesting bags, blankets and clothing, using local materials and traditional weaving and sewing techniques in an open source model.

Some of the many benefits include:

* Families without electricity can have lighting at night to read, provide medical care, and do simple tasks that others with electricity take for granted.

* Incomes can be sustained by local businesses sewing and marketing these items.

* Lighting is based on ‘clean’ solar nano-technology.

A luminous PLP Reading Mat integrates high brightness solid state lighting and flexible photovoltaic solar cell technology that can produce up to 12 volts of DC electrical power and 160 lumens of light in 5 hours of charge time. By day, the Reading Mat gathers electrical energy from the sun. At night, the Reading Mat can provide about 4 hours of white, digital light.

Cell phones and other small electrical devices can be powered by the textiles. Linked units of textiles can also work together to provide greater power for larger community tasks.

PLP have been working in the Mexican Sierra Madre since 2005.

Other projects are underway in Nicaragua, and for the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazonias, and South Africa.

More information on donation opportunities, product and program details can be found on their website.