Tag Archives: South Africa

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Lighting up the World: Solar Empowerment for South African Youth

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

But helping to make solar power available to people without access to electricity is really and truly awesome.

 

I’m proud to support my friend Pam Ulicny’s great Indiegogo solar power project:

We are seeking to raise $10,000 to start a pilot program that will train and employ local youth to install, distribute and maintain home solar energy/lighting systems for people in rural villages and towns in South Africa without access to consistent, reliable, and renewable power. The money raised, after expenses, will pay for 50 solar lighting systems to begin this project.

We know, if we teach people how to build and use solar solutions for their energy needs their lives and their communities will be changed for years to come.

Science teacher Pam Ulicny holding a solar lamp. "It's better to help people make a solar lamp than to curse the darkness."

Science teacher Pam Ulicny holding a solar lamp she designed.

We know, replacing kerosene as a primary fuel source with solar energy solutions will bring improvement to the health and well-being of women, children and communities.

We are committed to creating long term solutions to the energy and economic needs of energy impoverished communities in South Africa and other developing countries.

SUNDANCE SOLAR has partnered with Educo Africa and ASPIRE Youth, two local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Working together, we will provide the equipment, business & technical training and mentoring necessary to educate people in urban and rural areas on the health and economic benefits of the use of solar energy.

We know supplying homes with solar energy systems and training and mentoring the youth contributes to improving the health and standard of living of families and their communities.We know every act of kindness and empowerment inspires another.

We know, others need your help and support.

We know working together we can make a difference.

For more on this great program, and to contribute to it, go here.

 

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Photo of the Week: A Solar Neighborhood in South Africa

A solar hot water heater for every house.

While accompanying a group of American secondary school teachers through South Africa a couple of months ago (on the Toyota International Teacher Program), I had a great surprise. We were on a bus north of Durban, traveling to a reforestation project when I realized that nearly every house we passed had a solar hot water heater on the roof. This went on for at least a couple of miles. As you can see from the picture, the houses didn’t fit the stereotype of yuppie green homes. This was a none-too-wealthy rural area with small cement block houses.

CO2 emissions of selected countries.

South Africa is the second largest emitter of CO2 per capita on the African continent (after Libya) and much of that is associated with electrical generation. In South Africa, as in the U.S., coal-fired power plants produce most of the electricity, so using solar hot water heaters rather than electric ones makes a lot of sense, both from a carbon standpoint and from an economic one.

I had hoped to get off the bus to take more pictures and talk with residents, but our schedule was already overbooked and the chance to stop at the “solar neighborhood” never happened. Still, it was exciting to see — especially since the solar homes just happened to be on the route to another climate change initiative, where “tree-preneurs” raise indigenous trees for a large-scale reforestation project. But that’s another story.

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A Beautiful Day at Kirstenbosch

It really was a perfect day when I took this GigaPan image at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa. Composed of 160 individual photos, the panorama covers 260 degrees in width. One of the joys of viewing a GigaPan is that it’s a participatory process. Hiding within those 260 degrees are probably upwards of a hundred species of plants — all indigenous to South Africa — and birds, insects and a few humans. Feel free, of course, to explore here by zooming in on anything that intrigues you. But, if you want to share your finds, you can create one of those snapshots you see at the bottom of the picture. To do that, click here to go to the image’s true home, on the GigaPan Website.