Spreading the light

The "Loving Lamp" is a solar LED lamp. And over the past three years, over 18,500 lamps have been distributed to children in Daliangshan in Sichuan, Yongshan and Wenshan in Yunnan province and Kashgar, Tumxuk, Taxkorgan Tajik and Yecheng in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Zhang Quanquan, the leader of the design team behind the lamps began to work on the device in 2014.

Speaking about his work, Zhang says: "A charity product is not like doing one that is for commercial use. There are many situations that we need to think about when children are using the lamp."

So, at first, Zhang's team wanted to use wooden sticks to hold the lamp, but this was later changed.

The lamp, which is designed to be waterproof, can be easily assembled. Zhang and his team are continuously updating the device to be more practical, and distributing them to the most needy areas through a network of volunteers.

Speaking about the response to the lamps, Zhang says: "We don't want the students to write letters of thanks to us, but we still receive many. And each one is touching.

"There was one letter that said: 'I'll study hard and help more people like me when I grow up', which made our team feel that what we do is worthwhile."