CAS junior and economics major Mansi Prakash was named one of Glamour Magazine’s Top 10 College Women 2015 on April 8 for her nonprofit Brighter Today. The organization sends eco-friendly bulbs to people in developing nations to improve their quality of life.

A visit to her grandparents’ home in India inspired Prakash to establish the nonprofit. She noticed that the villagers were living without lights to save money. The villagers’ bulbs cost 20 cents and only lasted two months, but Prakash exchanged them for CFL bulbs that cost $2 but last up to five years, cutting electricity bills by 80 percent.

Prakash said that energy saving leads to increased productivity in other areas of life.

“Our data has shown that savings go toward food, education and health care,” Prakash said. “Women can take up work from home, and children can use the light to study for longer.”

Brighter Today’s team is almost as international as its cause. Prakash’s brother, who attends high school in the Philippines, currently controls the technical aspects of the company. And the nonprofit has a ground team of 12 volunteers and coordinators in India who are responsible for putting the project into place.

Prakash won the Social Venture Challenge and received a fellowship after pitching her idea at Clinton Global University Initiative Conference. Since then, she has been working with mentors who have provided her with the funds to move the project forward.

“Last summer we actually partnered with Philips, who have provided 100 percent of our bulbs,” Prakash said. “We carried out the project on a really large scale.”

Prakash and her team have recently developed a new, more expensive bulb prototype that uses sunlight to act as a 60-watt bulb. She plans to utilize her contacts, partnerships and Glamour recognition to establish Brighter Today bulbs in over 500 homes in the Philippines.

“I came up with the prototype last year,” Prakash said. “It’s like a plastic bottle. You fill it up with bleach and water and it has an LED strip connected to a cellphone charger, bulb and fan. We don’t really have the money to make it on a large scale, but with this award, we can make this prototype the best possible and then implement it on a large scale.”

For the future, Prakash hopes Brighter Today will become more sustainable by encouraging the involvement of high school students.

“We want to go through the high school route,” Prakash said. “If we work with my brother’s high school and elect a group of students who want to partake in community service, we can allow them to go in and distribute the bulbs and see the effect it has on these families.”

Prakash credits her success to her interest in social changes, a passion that developed out of her exposure to social problems.

“I grew up in third-world countries my entire life and I saw the poverty first-hand growing up,” Prakash said of her years spent in India and the Philippines. “That passion transferred over to me, and I think that giving back and creating opportunities for people that don’t have the same opportunities as you is important.”

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, April 20 print edition. Email Zoe Thompson at [email protected].