Why Illac Diaz is someone to look up to
They rose. They lifted others.
A social entrepreneur whose practical, low-cost innovations helped bring light, livelihood, and dignity to communities often left behind.
Some people see poverty and ask what they can give.
Illac Diaz asks a different question: What can we teach people to create for themselves?
That distinction is at the heart of his remarkable life’s work.
Long before Liter of Light became an international movement, Illac was already searching for practical solutions to problems most people simply walked past.
It Began With Filipino Seafarers
Illac encountered seafarers in Manila who had jobs - or were waiting for deployment - but could not afford decent accommodation while their papers were being processed.
His response was Pier One Seafarer’s Dormitory, providing inexpensive temporary accommodation while connecting seafarers with employment information and other assistance.
It revealed something that would characterize virtually everything Illac would do afterward:
Look closely at a problem. Listen to the people experiencing it. Then design a solution they can actually afford and sustain.
From Shelter To Schools
Illac went on to establish the MyShelter Foundation, turning his attention to inadequate housing and classrooms, particularly in poor and disaster-prone communities.
Instead of assuming inexpensive construction had to mean inferior construction, he explored alternative building techniques using locally available materials and local labor.
Among MyShelter’s most fascinating initiatives was the Bottle School Project, which demonstrated how discarded plastic bottles could be repurposed as building material for classrooms.
The philosophy mattered as much as the buildings:
Use what a community already has.
Train people locally.
Reduce costs.
Keep skills and resources within the community.
That philosophy would soon lead Illac to the project for which he became internationally known.
Then Came The Light
Many homes in poor communities were dark even during the day.
The solution was astonishingly simple: a clear plastic bottle filled with water and a small amount of bleach, installed through a roof so that sunlight refracts through the water and illuminates the room below - without electricity.
But an important distinction should be made:
Illac Diaz did not invent the original bottle-light technology.
Versions of it already existed, most famously through Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser.
Illac’s great contribution was recognizing what this simple idea could become when placed in the hands of communities.
Through Liter of Light - Isang Litrong Liwanag, he helped transform and scale the concept into a grassroots movement.
The technology evolved beyond daytime bottle lights to solar-powered lamps and streetlights using small solar panels, LEDs and locally obtainable components.
But Illac didn’t want simply to give lamps away.
He wanted people to know how to build them.
Empowerment, Not Dependence
This may be the part of Illac Diaz’s story that I admire most.
Liter of Light teaches communities to assemble, install, repair and maintain their own lighting systems.
Knowledge stays behind.
Skills stay behind.
Livelihood opportunities stay behind.
And when something breaks, people do not necessarily have to wait for another donation or another shipment from somewhere else.
The community itself becomes part of the solution.
Liter of Light eventually grew far beyond the Philippines, developing into a global grassroots movement reaching communities in dozens of countries.
More Than Light
Illac’s work has never really been about lamps alone.
Through MyShelter and initiatives such as Design Against the Elements, he has also promoted low-cost, climate-resilient housing and architecture - particularly important in a country repeatedly struck by typhoons, floods and other disasters.
His projects connect problems often treated separately:
poverty, housing, education, electricity, waste, employment and climate resilience.
To Illac, they are interconnected problems requiring practical, sustainable solutions.
He Could Have Taken A Very Different Path
Illac’s education opened doors that could easily have led him elsewhere.
He earned a Master in Entrepreneurship from the Asian Institute of Management, studied urban and regional planning at MIT, and later earned a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellow.
Yet he brought that education back to problems where sophisticated solutions often mattered less than simple solutions ordinary people could afford, understand and reproduce.
His work has earned significant international recognition, including honors from JCI, the World Economic Forum, Asia Society and the Zayed Future Energy Prize, among others.
But the awards are not why Illac Diaz belongs in this series.
Why He Is A Filipino To Look Up To
It would be easy to remember Illac simply as the man associated with the bottle light.
His story is much bigger.
He saw seafarers without decent temporary housing - and created an alternative.
He saw communities without affordable classrooms - and experimented with recycled and locally sourced construction.
He saw homes without electricity - and helped communities create their own light.
He saw discarded bottles - and saw resources.
And perhaps most importantly:
He saw people whom society often regarded merely as beneficiaries - and saw builders, entrepreneurs, teachers and partners.
That may be his greatest contribution.
Because genuine development is not simply about what we give people.
It is about what people become capable of doing for themselves.
Illac Diaz did not merely bring light into dark homes.
He helped put the ability to create that light into people’s own hands.
And perhaps that is why the glowing lamps he holds in our photograph are such a fitting image of his life’s work.
They represent more than electricity.
They represent ingenuity. Dignity. Self-reliance. Hope.
A Filipino idea, shared with the world.