In response to the natural disasters that have been taking place in our world, and the multitude of messages we have received from the Little Sun community, we have decided to take action. We are collecting donations to send portable solar powered lamps and phone chargers to people affected by disaster. Your contribution helps us keep a running stock available for those affected by these disasters and power outages, and helps us instantly respond to future emergencies. Donate now: US / EU

The Agenda 2030 was determined by the UN in New York in September 2015. It is a milestone for the future of our planet, specifying a sustainable transformation plan for the global economy, social life, and environment. And this plan has a direct impact on Hassna and her family. The Agenda 2030 defines 17 goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and among these goals lies Goal 7: the prevalence of affordable and clean energy. By 2030, all people on this planet should have access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy. There has never been such an ambitious goal before, and maintaining a sustainable energy supply globally is a complex task.

Since Hassna and her family do not have access to energy, they cannot read, work or do their homework after sunset. Kerosene lamps and fireplaces as sources of light do not provide enough light to see or work easily. This has an impact on school performance. The probability of dropping out of school without a qualification is quite high. Since Hassna and her family do not have access to clean energy, they are forced to use their kerosene lamp and their fireplace. The smoke and fumes from both are very harmful for the eyes and can cause eye and lung diseases.

Since Hassna’s home has no connection to a power supply, her family has to spend a lot of money for kerosene or on batteries for flashlights. In addition, they also need to pay for transportation to a shop to buy kerosene. Although Hassna is attending school, she doesn’t have access to the quality of education that others in the world may have access to, and doesn’t learn about the harmful effects of kerosene since her community relies on it. Due to the lack of awareness, Hassna and her family cannot improve their living conditions.
Learn more about Little Sun's work with the SDGs

Over the past two decades, the sea has slowly crept into human geography. Together with colleagues in the emergent field of critical ocean geography, we have been making the argument, time and again, that geography has historically been a land-locked and terra-centric project. Geography is earth-writing, and earthlessness has been taken very literally in shaping the spaces in which geographical study has taken place. As we have been arguing, new geographical knowledge can be unearthed when thinking from the sea [...] Subjects, objects, knowledges, and forces – seafarers, migrants, offshore protesters, fishermen (and women), naval officers, fish, ships, fossil fuels consumer goods laws, current, and infrastructures have all featured in the numerous publications that now pay attention to life at sea.

– Kimberley Peters and Philip Steinberg, p.28. Allan Sekula: OKEANOS, the sea-themed book on the late U.S. photographer published by TBA21. For his work Fish Story he spent 7 years photographic harbours and port cities around the world

What are the alternative sites of modernity, we may then ask, connected to the oceanic space that we need to reclaim and can reclaim only if we finally give up the notion of the phenomenological void of the ocean? And finally: what does the relationship to water, to the riverine, the estuary, the oceanic bring us? What zones of relationality does it establish? How can water be seen as a hyperlink, as a connection, as a network of
connected thinking along geopolitical fault lines? What does the ocean want to tell us?

From Not just a Fish Story by Daniela Zyman, on Allan Sekula's essay-film The Forgotten Space p. 29 Allan Sekula: OKEANOS, the sea-themed book on the late U.S. photographer published by TBA21.