The preparation stage of the solar panel project starts in Hong Kong, approximately six months before the deployment in Rwanda. The project team undergoes a series of about 36 hours of structured and rigorous training in the form of lectures, seminars, group discussions and technical workshops. This equips students with the necessary background (historical and cultural) knowledge, technical knowledge, and skills using relevant hand tools. The second phase of training starts when the project team arrives in Rwanda. Together with the Bridging Team, they spent about 8 hours in testing and training to finalize the design, assemble the solar panel system, lights, switches, controllers, etc. and test all the partially-assembled sub-systems. This on-site training and preparation allowed the project team students to transfer their knowledge and skills to the bridging team. Finally, the systems were deployed in the village. During deployment, the project and bridging teams worked with the community team to install the system. Through teaching by demonstration, team members were able to master the technical skills, and some of them were able to help maintain the equipment in the long run.
Since 2015, this project has successfully wired up an entire village of almost 350 households in Kigali province. Per-household, the amount of electricity made available is not large – a single charging station of 240W serves around 30-50 households – but even this small amount of electricity has made its impact. The LED lights - generally less than 10 watts each, with 3-4 per each household - enable the family to extend its working hours for several hours beyond sundown for household work, such as study, fellowship, and visiting. The capacity for mobile phone charging makes it unnecessary for the villagers to walk long distances, often over 2 hours to charge the phones. A small rechargeable radio, which we added after in 2017, provides news and much-treasured entertainment, and a connection to the outside world. One family told us that since the light was installed at their home, their children’s schoolmates from neighboring villages often come to study on the weekends, which appears to have positively impacted their children’s school performance. Another family told us that they now no longer need to send their children to bring the mobile phone for charging at the village center, thus their children can go to school on time (they previously used to bring the mobile phone for charging twice a week before school).
In addition, some indirect benefits have also been observed. The most obvious indirect beneficiaries have been the young people from community team. Some of them have been involved in the project since its inception. This experience has enabled them to build up their skills, to the point where some of them are able to execute the project on their own. A particularly encouraging example is the family of one of the young people who had been involved in the community team. Their house had been wired during the project, but shortly afterwards, the family built a new house. Using the tools that we had given them to carry out repairs, they successfully dismantled the entire electrical system from the old house and installed it in their new house. Inspection by the project team teachers confirmed the good quality of the work, with properly-secured wires and robust connections.
The success of this project, obviously, depended on long-term collaboration, having evolved over several years. In the process of designing, revising and executing the project, the university project team, the NGO bridging team, and the community team built up trust and respect for each other, and all sides grew in experience, confidence and capacity. This is demonstrated in the growth in the number of households served per project, both in absolute terms and as a function of the size of the project team. The collaboration developed into a base on which we can launch projects into other dimensions of quality of life besides electricity. In 2019, two additional teams were brought in to join the project in Rwanda: tackling SDG#2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG#15 (Life on Land) through a vegetable garden and a rocket stove project.
These results has been published in greater detail in a conference paper: Kenneth W. K. Lo, Stephen C. F. Chan, Grace Ngai, John Kalenzi, Phanuuel Sindayehaba, Innocent Habiyareye. “From Beneficiary to Community Leader: Capacity Building through a Renewable Energy Project in Rwanda,” 10th IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC 2019), Oct 29 – Nov 1, 2019, Seattle, Washingtin, USA.
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