By Bethany Summersgill | ESW International Projects Co-Chair
January 17, 2008
Hey, everyone!
We’ve got some great news for you about the Panama Solar Project! Last year, Santo Domingo’s community members wrote a proposal to a local government representative requesting funding to provide electricity for half of the households in the community. He agreed to pay for 10 electrical systems, and we recently found out that all of the installations are complete!
This is terrific not only for these 10 families, but also for all the local communities—having the involvement of local institutions and funding makes it more possible to replicate and sustain the project. This also means that our group only needs to buy supplies for 4 more households to reach the total of 17! During spring break, we’ll send a team to Panama to buy supplies and supervise these installations. We’re recalculating our budget, but we’d still appreciate donations to help cover travel and supply costs. And we’re not done yet!
Stay tuned--we’ll continue building our relationships with the people of Santo Domingo and Santa Librada. We’re planning to start a new project in Santa Librada: either the installation of a computer at the school to give kids a chance to learn computer literacy, or the electrification of households to improve quality of life. For Santo Domingo, we’re considering designing an environmentally-friendly and more economical version of a machine that removes the hulls from rice—a grueling task when done by hand, which is how the communities process their rice now. Having the machine would free up time and allow the communities to increase their productivity and thus their economic situation.
We would really appreciate donations to help us get started on these new projects. If we raise enough, we could even potentially bring a laptop to Santa Librada on our next trip! Thanks so much for your generosity—it’s made a huge difference for these people!
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