During the past month, the major hurricanes and even earthquakes have plagued parts of North America. These events in addition to the recent announcement of Philips Lighting’s establishment of the Philips Lighting Foundation, have made me  realize that people have forgotten how important artificial light is to our lives. We get a few reminders when lightning strikes cause the power to go out.

But even then, we usually don’t recognize how essential it is for everyday work, play, and life as we know it. The newly launched Philips Lighting Foundation has the mission of bringing sustainable, artificial lights to underserved communities. (Ref: Coverage).

Lighting allows people to do activities at night without kerosene lamps or candles that can be dangerous. Artificial lights have been around for over a hundred years, so, it is easy to forget about how important they are to the way we live.

Most activities that require light would not happen at night without electric lights. There would be no indoor or outdoor sporting events, very few nighttime concerts, and studying at night and night classes would be essentially impossible.

About 1.06 Billion Don’t Have any Electrical Lights in Their Homes

This is not the problem of just some isolated tribes and very poor slums, but a widespread issue for about 1.06 billion people according to the recently founded Philips Lighting Foundation.

The foundation has the goal of bringing sustainable lighting to these underserved communities. An organization with a catchier name, the Light Up the World organization, has had a similar mission for some time. (Ref: Coverage).

While we go about our daily lives, we should not take lighting for granted, even if its always been there at the flick of a switch. As we discuss the latest advances in connected and white tunable lighting, we should not forget the fact that many people in the world don’t even have access to any electrical lighting in their homes.  Our lives would not be the same as we know them without lighting.