Give Light to 100 Cambodian Families

Thanks to your support and contributions we have reached the original goal and will be able to provide solar lighting kits to 50 Cambodian families! The project has been such a success that we have decided to extend it in order to finance another 50 families, for a total of 100!

The first shipment of lighting kits that were donated by you will arrive next week and we will immediately take them to the village to install in houses, set up small local entrepreneurs, and do more workshops and demonstration.

As mentioned in the previous report, the success and interest of the program within the village has been even greater than expected and we are now setting up local entrepreneurs that can supplement their income by selling and maintaining solar lighting kits within the village. So your original donations will now affect way more than just 50 families. To add on to that, our partner organization in the village, was so impressed with the success of solar in this community that they have now applied and RECEIVED a grant to put solar energy systems in key facilities and public spaces fro the village, such as the ranger station, community center, and schools. This is going to make a HUGE difference in the lives of the entire community, not just a few households.

One again, thank you for your incredible support with this project! I hope you can help us with our new goal of funding another 50 families! Please send this to family and friends!

Please keep an eye open for more updates and pictures soon! 

We are happy to let you know that things are moving along. We have been able to get the approval of the village leaders to go along with the project. Last week Yejj Solar Technologies visited the Phat Sanday Commune, more specifically, the Phat Sanday Floating Village, where the first phase of the project will run. Thanks to our friends from Live&Learn, we were able to meet and identify the potential entrepreneurs as well as spend a lot of time with many different households, of a wide range of income within the community, as well as the village chiefs and other leaders in the community.

The interest in the solar lighting kits was HUGE! Even more than we expected! People kept showing up in our barge, asking to see the products. So aside from organizing a couple workshops and demonstrations open to the public, we spend a lot of time demonstrating the kits to individual families that would show up. And every time they saw us walking around the village they would stop us and gather around to see it again and try to convince us to sell it to them, even though we only carried samples for the demonstrations.

After discussing with the village chiefs, leaders, and representatives from Live&Learn, we have agreed that, even though the kits have been fully donated by you, each family that receives one of the kits will be charged a minimal fee (to be agreed upon by the family and the village chiefs, and approved by Yejj Solar). The full proceeds from these fees will go directly to setting up the local entrepreneurs who will manage the kits. If there are any funds left over after the entrepreneurs are paid, these will go towards donating even more lighting kits for more families! So your contributions are now affecting more than just one household! For every kit that you donated, you are also contributing to setting up local entrepreneurs and also financing extra kits!

So… THANK YOU for making such a huge difference in these people’s lives!

Next Steps:

-          Even though we still do not have not reached our goal, we are not wasting any time and we have already ordered the kits that you have sponsored up to this point, in order to start installing and improving people’s lives right away. The shipment should be here within the next few weeks and we are already planning on the next visit for more demonstrations but also to install the kits in people’s homes!