Solar study lights, built by students
Our Work with Loksadhana
Loksadhana began in 1982 in Chikhalgaon, a village in Maharashtra’s Konkan region. Founders Dr. Raja Dandekar and Professor Renu Dandekar started with a belief that rural students should be able to learn, build skills, and find opportunity without having to leave their communities behind.
That work has grown from one classroom into a network of education, vocational training, health, agriculture, women’s empowerment, and rural development programs. Loksadhana says it now works across 56 villages. Its school, which opened in 1987 as the first secondary school serving 46 nearby villages, has more than 2,700 graduates.
Loksadhana (India): 15 lights allocated, not shipped. These lights are allocated. This page does not call them shipped.
Our Impact
15
56
2,700+
About the Partnership
Making room for learning close to home
Loksadhana’s approach is practical. Alongside formal schooling, students can learn trades and technical skills through hands-on programs. Its skills center serves about 450 people each year, and the organization reports more than 140 alumni who have gone on to become entrepreneurs. Two hostels provide space for nearly 200 young people who live too far away to travel to school each day.
Each light is small by design. It gives a student a rechargeable source of illumination for reading, homework, or another task when dependable electricity is not available. Loksadhana brings the knowledge to place that tool where it is most useful.
A practical partnership
Flash Forward’s own work begins with students. Young volunteers take part in engineering, building, fundraising, media, and operations, then help turn that effort into a finished solar light. The partnership with Loksadhana connects that hands-on learning in one community with practical education work in another.
Loksadhana’s relationships across rural Maharashtra will guide the lights toward students who can use the added hours after sunset.
Sources
Partner information comes from Loksadhana’s official pages.
history and mission · education programs · founders’ journey · skills training
Latest Stories
Program record: 72 lights for three partners
42 lights have shipped to Haiti. Thirty more are allocated to partners in India and the DR Congo and are not described as shipped.
The electricity figure we cite
655 million people lived without electricity in 2024, according to Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2026.
Founded by students in Bellevue
The organization began in 2024 as a student project and built its first solar study light prototype that year.