SolarBuddy: 10 Years of Impact
If we can imagine the solutions, we can build them and create the world we want to see.
By Simon Doble
What a decade it has been. This is still so surreal.
People have been asking me this for days, how does it feel that SolarBuddy is turning 10?
Only I and a handful of others know that the official birthday was a few weeks ago already. As for me, I was working on the idea for about a year before that. Knowing that, I thought the celebration won’t get to me. I was wrong.
So how does it feel? I think of it like being a parent. You try to raise your children to be resilient and strong, to be proud of who they are while remaining down to earth, compassionate and empathetic.
That’s what I try to do with organisations.
SolarBuddy is like a child to me and it’s incredible to see it grow, innovate, and attract amazing new talent with ideas for the next decades. Working around the clock in the early days to ensure they're fit and healthy and strong, it’s that much more satisfying to see them walk on their own, making decisions on their own.
SolarBuddy was always a team effort. I was the face of it, yes, I appreciate that. But it took a village, and it still does. What I'd like to think is that the values and qualities I instilled in that organisation are still alive in everyone who's working on it now.
And that these values extend beyond SolarBuddy, to the thousands of volunteers that make our impact possible, to donors, partners and to the families and children that now have ‘a buddy’ in this incredible family.
When I was seven or eight years old, I had a sign above my bed: "Visualise to materialise."
That's been my life, that’s the force behind this incredible movement. If we can fly men around the moon and land them back again, if we can build incredible AI, then we can solve fundamental human problems.
If we can imagine the solutions, we can build them and create the world we want to see.
Here’s to another decade,
Simon
Watch the 10 Years of SolarBuddy Impact:
