Provide electricity to 500 students in Belize

Dear Friends!

We continue to give thanks for all of you: the many contributors that continue to make this project possible, and I am pleased to report that I have made two site visits in the last four months! The first featured a Foundation Board meeting on campus, and the second was with a group of volunteers.

At the Board meeting, we focused on our continuing support of the school and plans for the future, which of course includes our solar renewable energy system and other green initiatives. One of our most recent and ambitious green projects is the installation of a 33,000 gallon rainwater-collection-cistern. This cistern is now enabling the school to largely disconnect from very expensive city water (except in the case of long-lasting drought).

In addition, we discussed the need to replace the many older fluorescent light fixtures in all the classrooms and office/computer learning spaces with newer, LED lighting, which will save significant energy and cost. And we re-affirmed our need to install additional capacity in our solar-renewable energy system.

During my volunteer trip, our group of eight helped complete the cistern project by raising the funds needed to install and make functional a commercial-grade UV lighting/filtration system.  We dug trenches and installed piping as part of this effort, while more experienced Belizean colleagues installed the actual filtration system. I am pleased to report that potable water from the Cistern is now flowing to supply the entire school!

My team also began the process of replacing the older fluorenscent lighting, completing about 20% of the total. Moreso, we re-roofed part of the computer learning lab because the previous sheet metal panels were thinner than desirable and had started to erode. We also continued work toward completing the volunteer housing upon which we intend to place our next set of solar panels.

I am happy to report that school is back in session, and despite an up-tick in COVID-19 during May, the school did not need to re-close and was able to conduct a full in-person graduation just last week. Approximately 43 "Standard 6" (eighth-grade) students received diplomas and some of them will move into high-school in the coming year! We are very thankful that things seem to be returning toward a fully normal academic year this fall -- and yet I can't be more thankful than that this solar project continues to help enable the school to keep its doors open.

With much gratitude,

John

Greetings one and all,

We give thanks for all of you: the many contributors that continue to make this project possible. While not much has happened in the last six months, we are thrilled that we have a volunteer team on campus this week and several more visits upcoming -- including an HCEF Board meeting the weekend of March 12 as well as another volunteer team coming in mid-April. I'm personally looking forward to being a part of both of these upcoming on-site trips. These trips are critical as we hope and plan to re-energize the many volunteers that have formed the core of what makes this school possible, including the two sets of solar panels that you are all supporting!

As I mentioned last time, we've been able to make slow but steady progress laying the literal groundwork (now fully landfilled!) for our new multipurpose building, upon which we plan to house an additional array of solar panels. Further, a second new set will be placed on top of the campus residence which will provide modest housing for both short and long-term volunteers.

While it had been hoped that in-person learning would resume last fall, the Omicron variant prevented that. Unfortunately, it spread rather widely amongst the school community, including families and teachers. More than half our faculty became infected, but fortunately no one has suffered a serious case.

In practice, this means it's only been in the last week or two that school has re-opened to in-person learning. Currently 50% of students attend one day, followed by the other 50% the next day. Clearly this is not ideal from an educational standpoint, but with the limited resources available to the school / community during the pandemic, this is at present the only realistic option.

We did suffer the failure of one of our zero-grid feed units last fall, and our solar renewable energy in-country partner, SESB, was willing to make a site visit and repair the unit. I have included a couple of images from that unit that show how the ZGF unit prevents over-production from being sent back out onto the grid, and the savings we have realized from this set of panels over the last 3 months. That said, with the Belize government in quite dire financial condition due to the pandemic, no progress has been made on the proposed net-metering "auction" which was to have occured even prior to the pandemic.

As always, your support means everything in terms of our ability to develop the school in an environmentally responsible way while also reducing the day-to-day costs to operate. With such savings, we could not serve the approximately 450 children that attend, most of whom come from below-the-poverty-line homes. I look forward to my next report which will include the results of the two site visits I will be making over the next several months.

With gratitude,

John