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In May 2013, I attended a lecture

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at the Federal University
of Santa Catarina.

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They were offering
social exchange opportunities.

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There were three students giving a talk,

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one had been to Africa, the other to India
and the third to Eastern Europe.

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Their stories were so incredible

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that they made me question
that moment I was living.

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I'd just graduated
in Business Administration,

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and had returned
to my senior year at law school.

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I had a full-time job,
so I was professionally satisfied,

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but deep down I felt
that something was missing.

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I lacked life experiences like those.

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I started researching some places
I was interested in,

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I was torn between Asia and Africa.

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So I talked to some friends about where
they'd been, and their impressions.

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Two friends of mine who had been to Kenya
described it with such passion,

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such emotion, and even nostalgia
what they’d experienced there,

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that I'm sure they would’ve killed me
if I'd considered going somewhere else,

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But mostly I wanted to feel for myself
and see with my own eyes

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if everything they'd told me was true.

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At that time, the hardest thing
was quitting my job.

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My boss thought I'd become a hippie

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because I was going to leave everything
to do volunteer work in Africa.

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But the decision was made,

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I bought my ticket
the day after leaving my job,

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so there was no turning back.

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In July, I flew to Kenya,

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and as soon as I arrived,
the journey proved to me

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that if I was seeking adventure,
I had found it on that first day.

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The airline company lost my bag. Great!

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The guy who'd pick me up didn't arrive.

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I was left alone
in the airport for four hours.

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The house where I'd stay
no longer existed.

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I ended up going to another house,
and all of this on my first day.

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That's fine, I wanted adventure,

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that's what I was there for,
so I had to face it.

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Nairobi, to my surprise, or rather
to my ignorance, was a very rich city.

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I saw BMWs, five-star hotels,
even an expensive Brazilian steakhouse.

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The first time I saw this reality,
this stereotype we have about Africa,

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was my first day in the school.

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I remember waking up early around 7 a.m.,

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leaving home with my two
Chinese friends, Alan and Dousy.

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We got into a Matatu,
a small shuttle for 16 passengers,

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really tight, with very loud music.

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Some even have neon lights,
almost a party.

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I strongly recommend it to anyone
who goes to Nairobi, to try a Matatu.

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It took one hour to get to the slums.

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I remember when we got there
what surprised me most was the filth.

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There was no sewage system.
I mean nothing at all.

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They make huge piles of garbage
and burn them into embers.

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They'd burn releasing this horrible odor
and toxic smoke into the air.

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Not to mention all the dust around
because the streets weren't asphalted.

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In some slum areas the majority of people
can't afford private toilets,

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so they put their waste into plastic bags
and throw them out the window.

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In some places the smell
was just unbearable.

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So this was the first important lesson.

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We'd return home asking ourselves

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how we'd be able to work there
every day for eight weeks


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if we already felt sick on the first day.

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The first lesson was a paradigm shift
in that humans are extremely adaptable.

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After three days we were already at home,
we didn't care about the stench,

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we walked everywhere
and knew where to avoid the worst places.

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This was already
the first learning experience.

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I had originally gone to Nairobi

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to teach English and math
in a primary school,

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and to help build a school
with money we had fundraised in Brazil.

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My first challenge was as a teacher.

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I shared a 20m² room 
with two other teachers.

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Three classes in the same room, 
with no partitions.

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Sometimes I tried
to do dynamics, or tell a joke,

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which was impossible since it distracted
students of the other classes.

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It created an awkward situation
with the other teachers.

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I also had to adapt myself to the culture,

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because teachers there
have strong authority over the students.

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Sometimes they'd beat the students,
and I had to keep quiet,

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absorb this, and accept the culture,
and I couldn't do anything about it.

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This all proved to be
very difficult for me.

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I started to teach,

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and a week later we demolished the school
to build the new one.

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We moved to another building
we had bought, 500 meters away.

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The new building had better infrastructure
with a room for each class,

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but it presented us with a new problem
that we hadn’t dealt with before.

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Inside the classroom,
you couldn't see your own hand.

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This slum where I worked called Mathare
had 600 thousand inhabitants,

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one of the poorest in the whole of Africa.

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The shacks were very close to each other,

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which didn't allow the sunlight in
through the windows,

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to light up the houses or classrooms.

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We already had enough daily problems,

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like hungry students
whose only meal of the day was at school,

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a lunch made of potatoes or beans,

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or peanut butter for breakfast.

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Not only did they not have
learning material, trained staff,

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but on top of this the student
couldn't even see his own book.

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This made me so frustrated.

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I talked with an Egyptian friend of mine
who had the same problem at his school,

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and we decided to find a solution

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to bring light to communities
that didn't have access to electricity.

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We googled it and found
a project called "Liter of Light",

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but instead of trying
to explain this to you,

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I'd rather show you
the video of our first test.

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You can see how it works
and I hope you like it.

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[Liter of Light Brazil - Kenya]

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(Music)

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[Before and after results]

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(Video) Three.

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Two.

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One. Go!

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(Cheering)

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Wonderful, wonderful!

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(Applause)

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Vitor Belota: Well, just like you,

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the school director
seems to have liked it too.

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He was saying: "Wonderful, wonderful!"
at the end.

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Besides him, several other
school directors came to visit our school

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to see how the project was done,
and ask us to install it in their schools.

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Unfortunately, my Egyptian friend
was leaving that week

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and I had to start
the project without him.

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I quit teaching through lack of time.

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We'd spend the whole morning
preparing the bottles

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and the whole afternoon installing them.

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It wasn't an easy project,
we cut and dirtied ourselves a lot.

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We cut ourselves because
the aluminum roof was very thin.

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Another problem was food.

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We'd spend the whole morning working,
and going up on the roofs was complicated.

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Being so dirty we had to eat
something practical,

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which is difficult, for example,
with chocolate;

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because I'm up there on the roof,

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a white guy, a "mazungo"
as they say in Swahili,

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with all the children staring at me.

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How can you eat chocolate on the roof
if they've never seen chocolate before?

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That wouldn't be right.

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So our diet was basically fruit,
and to give you an idea,

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at the end of my eight weeks stay
I had lost 12 kilos.

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That wasn't my aim, but if you want
to work for some social cause

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or lose weight I highly recommend it.

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(Laughter)

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Even with all those difficulties
the project kept growing.

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One day, I had the satisfaction of seeing


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my five best friends beside me 
on top of the roof,

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and below three more friends helping.

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At the end of eight weeks
we had helped over 12 schools

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and installed over 140 bottles,
including in the interior of Kenya,

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which affected the lives
of approximately 3000 students.

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You may be asking,
"OK, Vitor, but how did you do that?

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DId you pay for the whole project?

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All those problems,
cutting yourselves, and the food;

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how did the exchange students
get together to do this?"

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I think the reason was about a feeling,
which in order to explain

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I'll need to tell what happened
in my last week there.

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We were doing the biggest project so far

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in a school called “Spurgeons", in Kibera,
in the largest slum complex in the world.

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In this school alone,
we installed 48 bottles.

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This is the finished school.

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One day I was up on the roof
and the sky started to turn gray.

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We'd never worked in the rain.

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so I climbed down the ladder
and gathered everything.

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As soon as I got down,
a teacher who I'd seen a few times there

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took me to show me her classroom.

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She led me to her table opposite the door,
right under a lamp we'd just installed.

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And then she said to me,

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"My boy, this is the first time,
in the four years I've been working here,

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that I can read or correct
an exam in my classroom.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you."

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She said it so naturally,

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but she had no idea
how those words would affect me.

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It took about an hour to get home
and I was thinking a lot 


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about how such a small thing
as installing a plastic bottle on a roof

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could make a person feel so grateful.

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You begin to question yourself.

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It wasn't just temporary help,
because these bottles last 2-3 years,

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so it impacts many people's lives.

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I got back home where I lived
with 21 other exchange students.

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I like to joke that we didn't have dinner,
we always had a feast.

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I asked my housemates,

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"Guys, how often in your daily lives

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do you feel unconditionally useful,
without wanting anything in return?

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How often?"

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I thought about my daily life. No.

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In my week perhaps? No. Month? No.

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And I reached the frightening conclusion,
that at the age of 24

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I'd never felt that way before
like that day with the teacher.

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This is what united the exchange students
and pupils in this project,

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it was this feeling of being useful.

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Unfortunately, that was my last week
before going back to Brazil.

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I remember being at the airport
in Johannesburg, South Africa,

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writing my last blog,
updating my family about the news.

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My father who knew about my unease,

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which all exchange students
and travelers have,

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the idea of going back
to your old routine,

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going back to the old life.

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So my father called
to reassure me, and said,

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“Son, don't worry, human beings
are products of their environment,

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you'll quickly get used to it again."

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It was exactly what I didn’t want to hear,
that I had to go back to my world.

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I had just been through this experience,
I saw how adaptable humans are.

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My father with his usual pragmatism
was right.

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As soon as I arrived in Brazil
I got in touch with Illac Diaz,

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president of the organization
that had spread the Liter of Light idea,

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asking him if I could start
the project in Brazil.

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He said, "Vitor, did you know
that the person who invented the idea

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of the solar bottle

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was the Brazilian Alfredo Moser
during the 2002 blackouts?"

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He invented it in Sorocaba
and Illac had found it amazing.

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He had asked Moser to spread the idea
around the globe.

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In the Philippines that year
he installed over 500 thousand bottles

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and began to spread the invention
around the world.

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He said, "Vitor, of course you can,

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but first show me pictures
of your project in Africa."

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I sent him the material,
and we got the good news

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that, so far, our team had made
the most bottles in Africa.

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And then he told me,

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"Vitor, there's a girl who contacted me
wanting to take Liter of Light to Brazil.

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I'll put you two in touch
and maybe you can work together."

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I said, "Of course!"

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Then a series of incredible
coincidences started

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which brought me where I am today.

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I was born in Brasília,
this girl was born in Maranhão,

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and both of us, by coincidence, had lived
on an island called Florianópolis.

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She got in touch with me,
and the next day we had coffee together.

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I was very curious about how
she got to know the project.

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And it was another amazing coincidence

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that she knew of the project when visiting
an exchange student, who lived in India,

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the same student
at the beginning of the talk

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who made a speech at the university

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and encouraged me
to do this trip to Africa.

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When she was visiting Pedro,

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he told her that he had been
to an electric power conference

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and had met Illac Diaz in person,

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and that Illac had given him
a Liter of Light flag and said,

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"Pedro, take the project
when you go to Brazil."

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So they both went back to Brazil
eager to create the project,

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although they'd never been up
on a roof before.

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But I had many roofs in my curriculum,
so as soon as I arrived


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we put together our team 
in a week to begin working.

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We saw huge potential
for the project in Brazil.

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Approximately 2,7 million people in Brazil
don't have access to electricity,

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according to the last national census.

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There are also those with access
to electricity, but cannot afford it.

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So you might be asking,
"OK Vitor, hold on...

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you, Pedro and Alanna,
and this team you mentioned.

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Do you all somehow intend

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to climb up every roof
in the world to spread this idea?"

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No, we don't have that intention.

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Our goal is to inspire, motivate
and teach local leaders

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to spread this idea
inside their own communities.

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The same way that I hope to do
with at least one of you here.

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After all, I sincerely want to ask you,

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how many times, in your daily lives,

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do you feel unconditionally useful?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)