On a muggy August evening, the lights went out at the after-school center where Maya Patel volunteered. In the glow of a few phone screens, she watched students struggle to finish their homework. That blackout sparked an idea: What if a backpack could store sunlight and give off light when power failed? The next day, Maya sketched a lightweight pack with a small solar panel and a clip-on reading lamp. Her first prototype flickered and died after ten minutes, so she swapped the battery and adjusted the wiring. Weeks later, a sturdier version survived a full hour of reading. A local engineer noticed her school science fair display and offered advice on weatherproofing. With a tiny grant, Maya assembled ten packs and loaned them to families. One student, Jamal, used the backpack lamp to read his science chapter during another outage. His mom reported that he finished on time without sitting by the open fridge for light. Encouraged, Maya added reflective strips for safety and wrote simple instructions in English and Spanish. Today, her community library checks out the solar backpacks like books. The program started with a single dark evening, but it grew step by step into a practical tool students can carry on their shoulders.