Brief Explanation

People pay little attention to such CSR activities, taking them for granted. How can we enhance awareness and empathy to a CSR activity, making it into something new and with significance and value? To resolve this, we viewed solar lanterns from an emotional aspect, rather than physical one, and set the following objectives: (1) to consider solar lanterns a container that delivers emotion and feeling from one to another, (2) to create contents easy to be understood even without words, and (3) to develop a program that anyone in the world can join at anytime, anywhere.

The Brief

The goal is to enhance awareness and empathy from people around the world to one of Panasonic's CSR activities, “100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project." Approximately 1.3 billion people in the world live without access to electricity and suffer from disparities in medical treatment, education, economic affairs, and other social problems. Panasonic has donated solar lanterns to help some of them, but the activity is little known. Within the framework of our CSR activity, we globally aim to raise awareness and empathy to "100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project," in order to get people involved in our project as many as possible.

How the final design was conceived

Instead of designing solar lanterns physically, designing the “TEMA” that goes into making one was the key. “TEMA” is like feelings that come with putting in the time and effort to make something for someone else. We developed an idea people can put their emotion by making designs of shades attachable to lanterns and participate in the CSR activity by not doing only one-click, but pouring “TEMA,” like when hand-knitting someone a muffler. We aimed at generating surprise and impressions among people not only who submitted designs and received “TEMA” lanterns, but who just looked at designs with “TEMA.”

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The website has gathered tens of thousands of visitors from 140 countries and regions, resulting in hundreds of submitted designs. 111 “TEMA” lanterns, designed shades with solar lanterns, were donated to non-electrified villages. Our Facebook page have reached 3 million people, and over 50 articles on information, design, or CSR websites (e.g., TrendHunter.com, designboom.com, Inhadbitat.com, etc.) have reached 35 million. We have created global inflows into this CSR activity and pipelines between senders and recipients to communicate together by “TEMA” lanterns, not mere bright, but sincere warm lights, with the help of powers of design, social network, and advanced technologies.