COP28: Filipino expat teaches people to make solar lamps in 30 minutes
Illac Diaz has been an active participant at last two COPs
Dubai: A Filipino expat in Dubai Illac Diaz, founder of Liter of Light, loves the climate action summits.
H has been an active participant at the last two Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC. This year is no different.
Diaz is attending the COP28 at Expo City Dubai and will be hosting several workshops in the Green Zone for visitors to learn how to make their own solar lamp in 30 minutes.
Diaz has been actively involved in previous two Conferences of the Parties of UNFCCC where he built large-scale solar art installations for Climate Action.
Diaz runs Liter of Light, a social enterprise that be-gan in the Philippines and now spread across the world including here in the UAE, said every Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC is a chance to amplify voices of climate leaders from the region. Liter of Light is present in 32 countries with over 2,700 youth ambassadors.
Raising awareness of climate change through art installations
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The Filipino expat’s Liter of Light was showcased at COP26 co-hosted by the UK and Italy where he raised a large- hand built solar art installations. The following year too, in Egypt, Diaz created a handmade largest solar artwork at the Giza Pyramids as part of a special parallel exhibition curated by Art d’Egypte.
At COP26, Diaz’s organisation partnered with students from the University of Saint Andrews, an official COP26 partner, to build a series of installations on campus.
Climate action of Youth
Diaz said all his installations are made by students and women volunteers in order to include them in the larger climate action.
“We teach them to make solar lights for our installations and we teach them to hand-make it in 30 minutes. The solar lights for these installations are built by student volunteers, women cooperatives, and young leaders who give 30 minutes of their time to assemble the lights by hand,” he added.
“As our region hosts the global climate change confer-ence in 2023, we want to lend our voices to the dialogue on climate change solutions,” said Diaz.
He noted: “In a world of over seven billion people, almost 75 per cent of the population does not speak English. Many of these people live in communities on the front lines of climate change, but do not have access to the technology or platforms to share their stories and messages to world leaders who can make a measurable difference on climate action. By engaging youth and the community in our work, we are pioneering a new kind of engagement, where technical skills for climate action meets creative expression.”