At StraightUp we live by our CLEARE values:

From St. Louis to Africa – Creating a Sustainable World

We recently confirmed our vision statement:  “To inspire a solar tribe to create a sustainable world.”  We had the conversation that while “world” can sound somewhat vague and trite, the world is indeed the community that we’re interacting with and advocating for.  Importantly, it starts with our local community and expands out from there.

Our current example is our work with Mehlville Schools and SolarAid.  We’re proud to proclaim that together, our local community (our tribe), has reached our goal of providing solar lighting to a school in Africa!

We had the idea that if solar benefits our local community and school district (Mehlville, in this case), then it can, and should, benefit a community a bit farther out in our shared world – Africa.

We partnered with Mehlville Schools.  They raised half of the approximately $1,600.  We then partnered with our local tribe through direct donations as well as Facebook “likes” (for each new “like” we received over a couple of weeks we donated $5 to SolarAid’s program) to raise the rest of the money.

In addition, the two different solar projects, for the schools across the globe, provide a wonderful demonstration of one of solar’s greatest strengths – it’s modularity.  Solar works here in St. Louis with five 25 kW grid-tied systems that reduce coal dependency, and it works in Africa through smaller, stand-alone solar arrays that replace harmful kerosene lanterns.  Confirming, that solar power can, and should be, available to us all.

Dane Glueck; President

StraightUp Solar