In January, 45 Philips employees, their families and friends, attempted to summit Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to promote energy efficient lighting, as a part solution to climate change, and to raise money for an Oxfam Novib project in Tanzania.
The Traditional Irrigation and Environmental Development Organisation (TIP) in Tanzania has already tripled the harvest and incomes for 56 000 local farmers. This event made it possible for TIP to further teach the population how to make better use of the natural environment and help to improve existing irrigation techniques.
The Philips employees set out to climb Kilimanjaro with three objectives, and on returning recently, proudly reported the following:
1. To raise money for an Oxfam-Novib water irrigation project near Kilimanjaro.
The team set out with a mission, and in doing so paid for all the costs of the trip themselves, as well as doing it in their own time. This was done to ensure that all the money raised went straight to Oxfam.
On 30 December 2007 the Philips team had a meeting with the local representatives of Oxfam and the TIP project, where they reported that a whopping $100 000 had been raised from the trip. The representatives were extremely grateful for the money raised, which they will be using to help local farmers boost agricultural output by 300%. Fundraising will continue for the next few months, as the team intends to produce a coffee table photo book with reports from the trip - the proceeds of which will also all go to Oxfam.
2. To promote a switch to energy efficient lighting.
There was a lot of global publicity around the project, especially with the help of the 'Save the Snow' website which also promotes energy efficient lighting.
The team also set up a pilot project in a Masai village for two sustainable sun panel lighting systems. These new systems can provide 8 hours of high quality light each evening after a day charging from the sun panel. It gets dark at 6:30 pm and many Kenyans cannot afford the higher kerosene prices which are a result of higher oil prices. Although well educated, these Masai had never heard of such solar powered lighting systems, and were extremely enthusiastic about the whole idea.
In addition, the trip was made carbon neutral through the installation by each participant of four CFL lamps in their home, which neutralised the carbon footprint of the trip.
3. To climb Kilimanjaro.
The climb exceeded expectations, with 34 people reaching the first (Gilman's) peak at 5685 metres and 22 of these continuing on to the highest point in Africa - Uhuru peak at 5895 metres. A number of publicity photos were taken and the Philips flag which had also earlier been taken to the top of Everest by Kick Stam, also summitted Kilimanjaro. A major reason for the high success rate was the good weather and the excellent team spirit, which existed on the mountain. Incidentally, the team found very little snow left on top - significantly less than three years ago at the same time of year.
The project has proved a great success to date, and the Philips team was very grateful to have received support from Philips CEO Gerard Kleisterlee, Philips Lighting CEO Theo van Deursen, Sir Bob Geldof and Dutch prime minister J P Balkenende, who sent the team a letter of support on the eve of their departure.
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