Clinton Global Initiative Highlights the Freeplay Foundation as Featured Humanitarian...

Clinton Global Initiative Highlights the Freeplay Foundation as Featured
Humanitarian Organization

NEW YORK, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The Freeplay Foundation announced today
that it has been chosen as a featured organization at this week's meeting of
the Clinton Global Initiative. The Foundation has pledged its intent to
integrate the award-winning Freeplay Lifeline radio and new clean energy
Lifelight into a program benefiting 20,000 extremely poor women and girls
across Rwanda.

Rural women and girls will gain reliable, on-demand access to radio and
Internet information and renewable lighting via solar-powered and wind-up
Lifeline radios and Lifelights. Participants will be able to access health,
literacy and economic development information, as well as agricultural advice
and practical life skills information. LED Lifelights provide both focused
task illumination and ambient area light. The women and girls will be able to
undertake after-dark small businesses such as weaving and beading, and they
can study and walk safely at night.

The Honorable James Kimonyo, Republic of Rwanda Ambassador to the United
States, champions the Freeplay Foundation's commitment to action.

"The Freeplay Foundation is a proven NGO in Rwanda and I fully support their
pledge," said the Ambassador. "Children breathe in toxic fumes and damage
their eyes when they study to kerosene lamps and candles. Light is needed in
every situation after seven o'clock, and our students will never become
properly educated if they can only study under these unhealthy conditions."

The Lifeline radio won the first Tech Museum Award for Technology Benefiting
Humanity and is the first radio ever produced specifically for use in
humanitarian projects. To date, the Freeplay Foundation and its partners have
distributed more than 200,000 Lifelines across Africa, benefiting more than
eight million people.

"I have often been told by rural women and girls how humiliated they feel
because they lack the most basic information," said Freeplay Foundation CEO
Kristine Pearson. "Radio can provide practical knowledge, and lighting can
increase success by enabling people to study at night or to extend the hours
of their small business. These are highly motivated women and girls, and our
renewable energy technology can give a powerful boost as they work to better
their lives."

Radio is the primary means of mass communication in sub-Saharan Africa, but
often, batteries cost too much for people to buy on an ongoing basis,
especially women and girls. Electricity is rarely available. The Freeplay
Foundation's Lifeline radio and Lifelights provide energy solutions via proven
wind-up and solar-powered technology.

Two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks, the Freeplay Foundation's Ambassador,
was the primary funder of the Lifelight and is an ardent supporter of the
Lifeline radio.

"The Lifeline radio can change the world - one person, one house, one village
at a time," said Mr. Hanks. "The beauty of the Freeplay Foundation is the
technology and the immediacy of its mission: to put radios and lights in the
hands of people who need them. Lifeline radios can make a positive impact
from the moment they are turned on in one of the villages, and I can think of
nothing more noble than helping people light their way."

Working mainly in Africa, the Freeplay Foundation enables hundreds of
thousands of children to learn English, math, science and life skills through
radio distance-learning programs. Coffee farmers learn new planting
techniques using Lifeline radios, and people throughout Africa learn how to
prevent HIV/AIDS while listening to their Lifelines. Nomadic tribes listen to
Lifeline radios as they caravan, and orphaned children - living completely on
their own - can grasp a "lifeline" to the outside world when listening.

The new Lifelight is targeted to the extremely poor, including orphaned
children, widow and granny-led households, and people who are ill. Fully
charged, the Lifelight can illuminate a room at the brightest setting for 6
hours, or can be used as a task (reading, sewing) light for more than 20
hours. The Lifelight converts 74% of kinetic (wind-up) energy into
electricity.

The Freeplay Foundation has distributed the Lifelight in Rwanda and South
Africa, and will launch a major project in December to support "forgotten"
women in Kenya. Additional Lifelight R&D was funded by the U.S.-based Lemelson
Foundation.

Learn more at www.freeplayfoundation.org. The Freeplay Foundation is a
fund-seeking organization with 501 (c) (3) tax exempt status in the U.S., is a
registered charity in the UK, and has Section 21 and 18A non-profit status in
South Africa.

SOURCE Freeplay Foundation

Kristine Pearson, CEO, Freeplay Foundation, +1-917-769-2022 (cell),
KPearson@freeplayfoundation.org; or Michelle Riley, External Affairs Director,
Freeplay Foundation, +1-912-898-2195 (office), +1-912-228-1695 (office),
riley.freeplayfdn@gmail.com