By John Barrie | Founder, The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
Yesterday, December 30, 2019 a group of Appropriate Technology Collaborative volunteers installed solar power on a home in Quixaya Guatemala. The family had been living by candle light all their lives and last night was their first bright night. The family has agreed to let us switch their solar power system to a prototype of our Solar.20 long lasting solar power system later this year. We expect valuable feedback on how the systems compare and we plan on incorporating this into our final design.
We made a short video on the last night without electricity and the installation of the new system. We will post the video and provide a link when it is finished.
Today is the last day of 2019. It has been a great year for The Appropriate Technology Collaborative. We received international recognition for our solar projects and valuable support from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop our Solar.20 solar power systems.
We've won three awards this year!
The Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association selected our Solar School Computer Lab project with the community of Tiritibol as an exemplary project in the field of renewable energy!
In 2018, ATC and community volunteers installed solar power to electrify classrooms and run a laptop computer lab at Tiritibol Primary School - a village 3 hours away from the nearest high school.
It was a true collaborative project: supporters in the US donated used laptops; volunteers brought them down, donors covered installation costs, the community covered food and locally available materials.
The goal was to teach 180 rural school children how to type so they could access the same modern education of their urban counterparts. With basic computer skills, rural kids have a chance at high school, professional jobs, and university to break out of poverty.
In a follow-up visit we returned to find that the laptop computers are not only teaching children how to type, but they began a distance high school program online!
This year the first 7 teenagers are going to high school in their rural village, and that number is going to keep growing every year as their younger siblings get a head start with computer classes.
PS: Still trying to remember the other two awards this year?
Looking forward to 2020 we will be interviewing foundations and nonprofits who work in the of Humanitarian Solar Power to start the process of expanding our Carbon Credits program.
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