> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.kaitlinquinn.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What If We Used the Power We Already Have? - URL: https://www.kaitlinquinn.com/blog/what-if-we-used-the-power-we-already-have/ - Published: 2026-09-17T22:29:23.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-17T22:37:38.000Z - Description: TL;DR: Power is not only institutional. It can be electricity, money, time, skills, safety, access, attention, care, or love. Edward Berlinski’s solar charging project is a reminder to notice the power we already have and ask where it could be useful. - Author: Kaitlin Quinn - Tags: Systems & power I recently came across [Edward Berlinski](https://www.facebook.com/edberlinski/), who posts on TikTok as [@SolarForThePoor](https://www.tiktok.com/@solarforthepoor?ref=kaitlinquinn.com). He goes around offering free solar-powered charging to homeless folks. It is technically simple, relatively inexpensive, and on its face almost mundane. Which is why I cannot stop thinking about it. A charged phone is easy to dismiss as a convenience until you consider how much of modern life now depends on one. For someone experiencing homelessness, a working phone can mean access to family, benefits, health care, transportation, caseworkers, job opportunities, identity verification, emergency information, and basic coordination with the rest of society. Research has documented charging access as a real barrier to phone use among people experiencing homelessness. So while Edward is obviously not solving homelessness, he is solving one small and very real infrastructure problem inside of it. We have become accustomed to thinking about change at a scale that often paralyzes us. We talk about systemic problems as though the only meaningful response is a systemic solution, and then most people understandably conclude that there is very little they can personally do. Edward's project offers a different model. He identified one problem within reach, found a resource he could provide, and started providing it. In the TikTok video I made about his work, I said, "Imagine if twelve people did this in every city." I did not mean that every city literally needs twelve people with solar panels. I meant that a dozen ordinary people consistently applying their own skills, money, time, access, equipment, or knowledge to problems around them begins to look less like scattered generosity and more like community infrastructure. ### That is the idea I think is worth copying. Maybe you know how to repair bicycles. Maybe you own tools. Maybe you are retired and understand taxes. Maybe you have a printer. Maybe you grow more food than you can eat. Maybe you know GIS, speak multiple languages, understand a government process, own a pickup truck, have a large audience, or simply have enough confidence to walk into a room and ask a question that other people are afraid to ask. **All of those things are forms of leverage.** The point is not that everyone should contribute in the same way. In fact, that would defeat the purpose. Our resources, privileges, constraints, identities, skills, money, time, and physical safety are distributed unevenly. There are environments where one person can move easily and another cannot. There are people with very little money but tremendous knowledge, and others with more money than they know what to do with but very little sense of where they might be useful. There are people with time, equipment, professional expertise, institutional access, or public platforms. The useful question is not, "What should everyone be doing?" ### It is, "What is unusually easy for me that could make something easier for somebody else?" That is part of what I find so compelling about Edward's work. He seems to have found something that fits naturally into the resources and capacity he already has. Helping people does not necessarily require abandoning your life and becoming a full-time activist, organizer, nonprofit founder, or public servant. For some people, a project like this may cost no more than a hobby. There are plenty of people who are financially comfortable, retired, underemployed, lonely, bored, or simply looking for something meaningful to do with their time. We tend to talk about community participation as sacrifice, but sometimes it can also be a genuinely enjoyable use of a life. This matters more than we acknowledge. People spend substantial amounts of money and time trying to feel engaged, interested, connected, useful, or less isolated. Sometimes they buy things. Sometimes they travel. Sometimes they pick up expensive hobbies. None of that is inherently bad. But there is no reason community contribution cannot also occupy that space. Helping does not have to feel like punishment. One of Edward's recent videos made this idea even clearer to me. He started wondering what else, beyond cell phones, he could help people charge. Rather than sitting down and researching every possible battery-powered device himself, he put the question into ChatGPT and generated a long list of possibilities to investigate. I loved that, partly because it demonstrates a much more practical way to think about technology than the purity tests we increasingly impose on one another. He could absolutely have spent hours building that list himself. But the list was not the meaningful part of the work. The meaningful part was deciding to expand what he could offer, gathering the equipment, going outside, talking to people, and actually doing it. **He used a tool to shorten the distance between an idea and action.** That seems entirely reasonable to me. I am not interested in pretending that there is some perfectly ethical technological existence available to us right now. Modern life is already an ongoing negotiation among labor, environmental impact, privacy, convenience, corporations, accessibility, consumption, and human need. People are going to draw those lines differently. I care much more about whether we maintain judgment and intentionality than whether we can prove ourselves morally pure through every tool we use. If a tool saves someone hours of administrative or research work and allows them to spend those hours actually serving people, that tradeoff deserves to be considered on its real merits. ### There is also a more personal reason Edward's project struck me. I once had a friend who was an electrical engineer, and when he talked about electricity, he talked about it differently than I had ever heard anyone talk about it. He would literally light up. Having grown up with a relationship to utility infrastructure that was far less automatic than mine, he understood electricity not just as a household service, but as something deeply connected to participation in modern life. That perspective stayed with me. That idea stayed with me. The idea that infrastructure we take for granted is not inevitable, and that the things we consider fundamental can evolve as society evolves. A century ago, nobody needed electricity to authenticate a bank account, join a telehealth appointment, navigate public transportation, receive an emergency alert, apply for a job, scan a QR code, or communicate with a caseworker through a smartphone. Today, participation in society increasingly assumes reliable access to power. I do not need to turn this into an argument about whether electricity should formally be classified as a human right. Rather, my point is that our understanding of basic infrastructure cannot remain frozen while the society built on top of it changes. Edward found a tiny place where that mismatch was visible and did something about it. That, to me, is the broader lesson. ### We often imagine **power** as something we acquire before we can act. First we get the title, the funding, the institution, the nonprofit, the platform, the permission, or the authority. Then we are finally qualified to make a difference. A lot of real community work happens in the opposite order. Someone notices a problem. They use what they already have. They make one thing easier. They learn from it. Maybe other people join them. Maybe an institution eventually notices. Maybe it never becomes anything larger at all. **The work still matters.** This is also why I do not think everyone inspired by Edward should go buy a solar panel and start charging phones. That would miss the point completely. His project is interesting because it fits his particular combination of interests, resources, safety, time, and willingness. My role in this particular story is different. I am probably more useful writing about his project, sending people toward his work, and using my own platform to make the underlying idea travel further than I would be trying to replicate what he is doing myself. That is participation too. ### We do not all have to occupy the same role to contribute to the same ecosystem. So when I say, "Imagine if twelve people did this in every city," what I really mean is: imagine twelve people in every city paying close attention to what they already have and where it could be useful. Twelve people fixing bikes. Twelve helping older neighbors navigate digital services. Twelve translating forms. Twelve maintaining community refrigerators. Twelve teaching basic technology skills. Twelve documenting broken infrastructure. Twelve helping people access public records. Twelve cooking. Twelve driving. Twelve making art. Twelve checking on people. Twelve noticing something everyone else has learned to ignore. None of that replaces institutional responsibility. Governments, corporations, nonprofits, and public systems still have obligations that individuals cannot and should not absorb for them. **Our own agency does not disappear while we wait for those systems to work.** That is what Edward's project reminds me of. You do not have to become exceptionally powerful before you become useful. You do not need a movement, a grant, a title, or permission to notice something within reach and make it work a little better. Look at what you already have. **Then use your imagination.** ## Find Edward's work **TikTok:** [@SolarForThePoor](https://www.tiktok.com/@solarforthepoor?ref=kaitlinquinn.com) **Facebook:** [Edward Berlinski](https://www.facebook.com/edberlinski/)