“How often do you assign homework to your students?” My question goes to Ondieki, teacher at Nasal Primary School, situated on the Kenyan savannah four hours by car from Nairobi. During the last two hours on our way driving here, the landscape has been wide open with scarcely sprinkled trees and some occasional mud huts.
”Never. It makes no sense since the children don’t have light or tables at home. Before they have finished their chores for the day – girls collect wood, boys look after the cattle – it is already dark, and kerosene is too expensive out here. This is why we are...
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This is a guest post by Ian Muir, the Director of Technology and a co-founder of GIVEWATTS partner organization, Read and Prosper, which aims to promote access to knowledge through the use of technology. Ian also serves on the advisory board of GIVEWATTS.
This past week, I was privileged to accompany GIVEWATTS CEO, Jesper Hornberg, to the Maasai Mara region of southern Kenya. We were delivering over 150 solar-powered lamps to two underserved rural primary schools, a mere elephant’s echo from the famous reserve. The specific mission was routine, posing few logistical hurdles, but the o...
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A couple of weeks ago GIVEWATTS did an installation of 100 solar lanterns funded by Yahoo! in a place very close to Lake Victoria. With us we brought some friends, among them Tindi, the author of today’s post, and Eric Wainaina, a well kown Kenyan singer, songwriter and producer. Please enjoy the read!
IT IS A REVOLUTION
For those of you have been in rural Kenya, in one of those many parts of the country where there is little to no electrification, you know how dark the night can be. No matter how much you squint, it is hard to see what is around you, especially if you are a city girl li...
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It is Earth Hour again! It is an hour every year where we acknowledge how we use energy, and turn our lights off. A magnificent gesture!
This year some of us are taking a step further. We are turning our lights off, and at the same time, we turn them on somewhere else. The “else” this year is Kenya.
The story of energy is a global story. It belongs to all of us. It is easily overseen, and often taken for granted. It is closely tied with development in developing countries, and it is closely tied with the climate and the future of the economy in developed countries.
Today, an esti...
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Emmy Chepkirui travelled with a team from GIVEWATTS and Andrew Amadi, the main link person to Siburi Secondary School. Emmy is documenting the process of ‘Giving Watts’ through images, video and text, and this is the first time she has visited a GIVEWATTS project. Here is her blog post.
With the surprisingly accurate guidance of google maps, Jesper, Andrew, Karen and I set off for Siburi in Rachuonyo District. As we left Nairobi in the morning, Karen remarked that, so far, GIVEWATTS has a reputation of taking unseasonal rain with them where they went and that it was bound to r...
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It is amazing to have so many people all in one place, everyone with what appears to be the same goal. If you scratch the surface, however, other things appear. Many different goals and many different motivations. With so many stakeholders that is hardly surprising.
What appears to be missing is leadership. Leadership in this context is complicated though. When there is no agreement on where we are, and there is no agreement on where we should be going, how can you round people up? More importantly, or what is being discussed with more heat, is how you allocate responsibility for past emiss...
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It is with pride and anticipation we open up the new GIVEWATTS website for you!
It has been long in the making, and we hope that it will tell the story of people getting more access. Primarily access to energy, but with it, all the other things that people in more developed countries take for granted. Schools with proper lighting and electricity, clean indoor air, homework time, and much more.
The site is fully functional, but we will be in beta mode for another couple of weeks, to add more content, and fix any bugs. We ask for your feedback to iron out any issues, and to add whatever it...
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If there is one thing we have learnt at GIVEWATTS over the last 12 months it is that with friends and supporters, anything is possible.
When we launched our initial website, close to a year ago, we were very pleased to see that our blog generated interest and donations. The site was a simple template form WordPress, but it did the job. About six months later, we released the second generation of the website, a more designed version, but without the backend, and not optimized for user-friendliness.
Now, after another six months, we have come some way in finalizing what should be on the webs...
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Some weeks back GIVEWATTS went to a place just outside Machakos to look at a number of schools and clinics. We wanted to find schools, where the pupils would benefit from having renewable energy installations. We know that by allowing more study time alone, the pupils benefits a great deal.
The people who went were myself, Jesper, Janet, who introduced us to the schools, and Marie De Lutz, a photographer and generally very observant person.
Rather than me telling the story, I will hand over to Marie, who wrote a an excellent piece about the trip in her blog:
http://www.whatnowphoto.bl...
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The reference group finished in style and the conclusions from Milestone 1 are very useful. Many examples of best and worst practices, and a very clear list of recommendations.
This week we are starting to look at the specific values of GIVEWATTS, both the organisational (be transparent, be simple, be effective, be proactive, be present), and that of the brand (entreprenurial, serious about impact and intuitive). The objective of GIVEWATTS is to raise funds to make sure schools and clinics in Africa have energy for light and cooking and so on. It must not be just any energy, it has to be re...
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