Habitat Green 2024

The moment of truth is coming.  Our project(s) for Rwanda for summer 2024 is getting underway.  An advance team will be on the ground in a matter of hours.  I will be there on Sunday.  The rest of the team will arrive in batches.   The site this year is about 50 kilometres south east of Kigali.   The team will be staying at two guest houses run by Catholic nuns near Kabuga, to the east of Kigali.  From Kabuga to the project site it is mainly unpaved dirt roads, one of the challenges in even getting to the site.  

Two teams, one led by Computing and another by Electrical and Electronic Engineering, will form the core installing solar panels.  They will be joined by a smaller team comprising of students from university partners in the University Social Responsibility Network (USRN), a team of PolyU staff, and a team of secondary school students and teachers.  

A team led by Fashion and Textiles will be helping local village tailors to integrate modern techniques with traditional skills and patterns, to produce new designs.  

We will be joined by the staff of our local partner the African Evangelical Enterprise Rwanda, and students from the vocational school Center for Champions.  

Overall, there will be 120+ from PolyU, 40+ from outside PolyU, and 100+ from Rwanda participating in Habitat Green 2024 in Rwanda.  For a total of 260+. 

The advance mapping team has already produced a map of the 400+ houses involved in the project. They have already been allocated to project teams and colour coded for easier identification.  From the elevation lines it can be easily seen that some of the houses are situated on steep slopes and will be challenging to get to.  But these are precisely those households who are in greatest need of help.  So we will do our best to get to them and install solar panels for them. 

It will be challenging but also exciting, ultimately fulfilling, hopefully.  Please pray for success and safety of the team.