The purpose of delivering solar lighting to the Dwankhonzi Community School is to give teachers more time to prepare for classes and students more time to study as well as provide adult literacy classes in the evening. Currently there is no electricity in the area and limited lighting both in the school and in homes. Days are shorter in Zambia and it is typically dark between 6:00 and 7:00 PM. As a result of these factors, the ability for teachers to prepare in the evening is limited and students are also inhibited in studying for their classes or doing homework. The promise of solar power and solar lighting is exciting, and has the potential to transform this school and the community as a whole. If solar power were available to the school buildings:
- We can provide laptops to the teachers in order help them improve lesson plans and add to curriculum development.
- Power a refrigerator to store critical medicines and vaccines, to be distributor by locally trained first line medical providers, to address life threatening illnesses that are common in the community (Malaria, Schistosamiasis, Measles, TB, etc., as well as diagnostic tools to test for these illnesses).
- Provide lighting that would allow extra time for teachers to prepare and time for students to study in the evening.
- Extend operational hours to include adult education classes to be held in the evenings
The first phase of this project was to purchase lights solely for the school building in order to test the product and evaluate how these lights would be adopted by the school. Our team delivered 10 D-Light S250 lights at $50 per unit. These lights have proven effective in enhancing the productivity of the teachers. For the second phase of the project, we plan to install a solar panel system for one of the classrooms. One of our outside partners, Jeff Olshesky from Beyond Solar (www.beyondsolar.org), will be traveling to the school in October to deliver and install these solar panels.
This project was made possible by a group of donors in Chicago that came together in Chicago to form a solar committee. This committee is made up of John Vlahavas, Jeff Chou, Andy Clark, Rakesh Khana, and Chris Kenessey. All five are previous Dwankhozi donors. Their desire is to see solar lighting available not only to the Dwankhonzi school building but also to the student and teacher homes. In support of this project, the team is hosted a fundraiser on September 24th and raised enough money to help support this project.
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