In an age where hundreds of women still die every day in childbirth, light can provide a genuine lifeline. A pioneering solar project is delivering hope to doctors, midwives and mothers-to-be all over the world. To hear Laura Stachel speak is to be immersed in a story as powerful as the energy that fuels it. Hers is tale of darkness and light, of death and birth, of determination and an ingenious idea that just keeps on saving lives.

An obstetrician by training and profession, in 2008 Stachel suffered a back injury that left her unable to continue delivering babies. Having long held an interest in public health, she went back to school in California to learn more about it. "They had a program where they were studying maternal mortality in Nigeria," she said, citing the above average number of women dying there in childbirth. "Eleven percent of worldwide deaths were happening in that one country."

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