Our Story

It began with a refuge.

In 1939, fleeing the Nazi terror that had overtaken his Austrian hometown, Max Kselman escaped to India — a country that gave him safety when much of the world would not.

Max's grandson, Joe Kselman, grew up on those stories: of a faraway place that had once sheltered his family. They stayed with him.

In 2012, Joe finally traveled to India to see it for himself.

A village without light.

His travels brought him to Gauterine, a village in the state of Bihar. What he found there was hard to reconcile with his own life back home: multi-generational families surviving on less than a dollar a day, in a village with no access to electricity at all.

The contrast stayed with him — and Joe realized he had exactly the skills to do something about it.

From one school to an entire village.

In 2013, Joe powered Gauterine's school. The more time he spent with the community, the more he saw what was possible.

In 2014 he launched a campaign to sustainably power the whole village — and later that year, he and his wife distributed solar home lighting systems to every single home in Gauterine. That success became the foundation for everything that followed.

On June 26, 2014, Solar Village Project became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

A mission that keeps growing.

Since that first light in Gauterine, Solar Village Project has completed some 300 solar projects — powering 95 schools, 35 clinics, and 170 homes, and lighting village streets across eight Indian states.

Today our work continues across India and Puerto Rico — driven by the same belief that started it all: that reliable, sustainable energy should be within reach for everyone.