By: Jessa Salvadico | Executive Chronicles
“You have to decide what success means to you, success means differently to every people, we can be successful in terms of financial, career, relationship with the family but once you find the meaning of success and your passion, you have to follow that and be patient, motivated and inspired by the people around you.”
Engineer Aisa Mijeno, currently a faculty member of De La Salle Lipa, Batangas and CEO of SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting).
In 2010, in order to be a full time instructor she decided to take a master’s degree on Computer Engineering and work on her thesis earlier. The lamp is supposed to be the final work of her thesis but it was rejected because it does not align with the field she’s taking. Seeing the potential of her work, she continue working on it despite of the first outcome.
Aisa sees challenges as something that keeps her moving forward. She’s the kind of person who loves to solve challenges and one if it is the invention of SALt lamp.
One of the main factors that lead her to continue working on this is the Kalinga community living in the mountain. Most of them are still experiencing lack access of electricity and using kerosene as an alternative.
While immersing with them, Aisa realized that the most natural abundant resources which are the salt and water will help the community. The SALt lamp will not only help this community but also other families who use candle to light their house. During the experiment she even spend her own money just to get materials that she needed.
SALt Lamp will help a lot of family to have access on electricity by using this instead of kerosene and it will help reduce the growing number of people who develop eye problem because of using kerosene lamp for reading. Also, as a member of Greenpeace Philippines, Aisa also consider that this invention will have a huge impact in climate change.
Last November 18, 2015 during APEC an opportunity came for Aisa as President Obama requested her to have a 30-minute talk for a panel discussion about climate change along Alibaba’s Jack Ma. It’s a great exposure and promotion for her invention.
With the help of her brother who’s in the business path they’re able to talk to different investors to raise more funds that will support the whole project.
For now, they are collecting 500,000 dollars in order to buy parts for the system that will allow them to make 2 million lamps.
Take a look on how the SALt Lamp works:
