Here’s how a billion people now without electricity could light up their world, improve their health, and join the global economy — by 2020. With LightUp, they could buy, and pay off in under two years, small photovoltaic solar panels with batteries that power LED lights and charge phones, for less than they now spend on kerosene. Established firms would scale up production and sales from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of units through a new working capital bond fund. LightUp’s campaign aims to spark that first beyond-business-as-usual investment, at competitive ROIs, from one or more US companies, with less than 2% of their current unrepatriated profits.
See the details at LightUp: An Investment to Change the World and links from there.
Are you imaginative, enthusiastic, capable, and entrepreneurial? Looking to get involved in a new world-changing project?
Do you have BizDev experience at a startup — or have you been an Organizer at a non-profit?
You can help promote and shape the evolution of LightUp from an idea to a project, to a campaign, to a successful conclusion, all within a year. You’ll connect with lots of people, starting with Felix Kramer’s and Dan Kammen’s networks (see bios below).
Taking a leadership position with LightUp can be your entry point into a career in climate advocacy or business development.
We have some initial seed funding to support your consulting half-time, during which time you’ll help us raise modest amounts to pay you to continue part- or full-time. (If you’re in the fortunate position of being able to volunteer, even better!)
Here’s where you’ll start:
- Set up and manage a workgroup for project advisors on the BaseCamp.com platform.
- Set up and maintain a WordPress site and domain after you help pick a name (working title “LightUpProfits”).
- Create and maintain a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
- Turn a contact list of a few hundred people into a MailChimp or other platform for email updates.
- Help develop a FAQ and key documents to demonstrate feasibility and mechanisms to promote the idea.
- Plan engagement strategies, for instance: individuals vote with their money that they want large companies to lend their billions. Small investors would invest through an intermediary like OikoCreditUSA, Sunfunder to spread that message.
- Strategize on ways to approach major institutional partners: OEMs and their trade associations, civil society organizations, NGOs, governments, foundations, development finance institutions, and the companies with overseas profits.
Helpful but not necessary: experience in domain hosting management, graphic design, Instagram, Wikipedia. Prefer but don’t require you to be local in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Please look at the page LightUp: An Investment to Change the World and its links to our articles in The Guardian and HuffPost.
Send a thoughtful cover letter, with your comments about the project and how you can help, a URL about you (LinkedIn is best — no attachments with emails), your consulting rates, andl how you heard about this posting. Address it to to lightup [at] beyondcassandra.org. We ‘ll get back to you if we see a fit.
DANIEL M. KAMMEN directed the World Bank’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency programs from 2010-2011. A physicist and Director of the UC Berkeley Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, for the past 15 years he has worked with the IPCC that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
FELIX KRAMER, entrepreneur, cleantech advisor and investor, and climate activist, led The California Cars Initiative’s successful 10-year campaign to get automakers to make and sell plug-in hybrid cars. In his bestseller, “Hot Flat and Crowded,” Tom Friedman said, “Felix Kramer has made plug-in electric cars not only his passion, but an imminent American reality.”