A BRIGHT IDEA - WINNER
SRI LANKA

One man's mission to stop the horrific, and totally avoidable, injuries caused by unsafe kerosene lamps in Sri Lanka.

"If I win the World Challenge I can make and distribute 40,000 of these lamps, protecting over 80,000 people from these horrific burn injuries" Dr Wijaya Godakumbura, Safe Bottle Lamp Project

Despite an electrification programme, over 6 million people in Sri Lanka, nearly one third of the population, don't have power. Many families rely on improvised lamps made from bottles to light their homes at night, but these can often spill and cause horrific injuries - figures suggest 300,000 people around the world die from accidental kerosene burns every year. Dr Wijaya Godakumbura, a surgeon who witnessed the terrible results of these accidents has designed a safe Lamp that can't roll over and cause a fire. To date, his small foundation has handed out about 775 thousand of the safe lamps.