A Soccer Ball That is Lighting the World

Where a world where when the sun goes down, that’s the end of their day as well and they can no longer see because they don’t have electricity to lighten their homes, Soccket comes as a revolutionary innovation to them. Jessica Matthews, the 25-year-old co-founder of Uncharted Play, producer of cutting edge technology products that combines with art just said it. She said that the reality for 1.3 billion people who don’t have electricity—practically one-fifth of the world—is one that they set out to solve.”

Soccket is a soccer ball that harnesses kinetic energy with every kick to it and can power a lamp for three hours from just 30 minutes of play.It all started in 2008 when Matthews and Julia Silverman, juniors at Harvard University, were paired together in an engineering class for nonengineers. The professor challenged them to create something that combined art and science to ease a global problem.

According to Matthews, no one was paying attention to the importance of play thus amplifying existing enjoyment to make the world a better place is their mission. But packing technology into an airless ball that looked and moved like a normal soccer ball was not easy. In fact, the engineers they approached at both MIT and Harvard at the time all said it was impossible. That just pushed the women even more.

First, they stuffed a shake-the-charge flashlight in a hamster ball and shook it—and sure enough the light was charged. Using this concept but in a soccer ball, they took their prototype out into the world to test it with the pros: 10-year-old kids playing in fields, at playgrounds and on slabs of concrete in Nigeria, South Africa, and Brazil, places where soccer is omnipresent but electricity is not.

Today, the Soccket is in its seventh iteration and is highly praised from both the developing world and engineers alike. Former President Bill Clinton even hailed Matthews at the Clinton Global Initiative. “If ever there was an innovator, she is it and she came up with an idea for clean energy that hardly anyone else has before!”

The ball is distributed in six countries through local nongovernmental organizations, who are making sure it gets to the communities that can benefit the most. Yahoo! followed the ball to the small village of Yohualichan in Puebla, Mexico. Besides having a shiny new ball to play with, the indigenous kids used it to do their homework. The women used it to cook and sew after sundown, helping them sustain their main source of income. From the kick of a ball, the reality for these families was flipped around and their lives were forever changed for the better.

Matthews added that in the developing world, the ball becomes a symbol of empowerment but it’s about the happiness of one in the now [while playing], and a hope for a better tomorrow.

Source: news.yahoo.com