Solar Mamas Featured at Meridian!

Solar Mamas comes to Meridian! On Tuesday, November 27, 2012, Meridian International Center and the Independent Television Service (ITVS) hosted the screening of the award-winning documentary Solar Mamas, as part of the Global Perspectives Film Series.

Shown to a capacity audience, including delegations with the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, the documentary was followed by a question and answer session with featured speakers – Jennifer Silberman, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility, Hilton Worldwide Inc. and Safaa El-Kogali, Senior Economist, Middle East and North Africa, Human Development Department, World Bank. Opening remarks were delivered by Greg Houston, Meridian’s Senior Vice President of Development and External Affairs.

Solar Mamas follows Rafea, a strong-willed 32-year-old Jordanian mother of four, traveling outside of her village for the first time ever to attend Barefoot College’s solar engineering program. India’s Barefoot College provides rural, poor and often illiterate women from around the world the rare opportunity to receive an education that teaches them how to make their communities self-reliant and sustainable. Once there, Rafea will join women from Guatemala, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Colombia in a life-changing six-month job-training program that will transform her into solar engineer - and change her life.

A part of the international WHY POVERTY? project, Solar Mamas is a groundbreaking cross-media event reaching more than 500 million people around the world via over 60 international television broadcasters as well as radio, internet and live events in November 2012. The film is one of the first honored by the Hilton Worldwide LightStay Sustainability Award, an award created by Hilton Worldwide and Sundance Institute to acknowledge documentaries that showcase the connections between sustainability, economic growth and community development.