Bhawna a 15 year old student in the GHS Poshettihalli school, Chikkaballapur district is an eager learner. A student of standard ten, this daughter of a landless labourer was worried as she finds no time to study time to study. Her family of 6 has been extremely supportive and has big dreams for her. Her problem was that their small home had no electric power.
Chetan a classmate of Bhawna does have power supply at home. He too finds it difficult to study. Despite living in a home with ‘electricity’, his problem was extremely low voltage. “The lights we use are no better that candle light” he said!
Light at night, a necessity for us remains a luxury for families who live in close proximity to our city.
Erratic power supply and low voltage and lack of access to even this erratic power supply makes studying a challenge for students in this area. While this situation prevails through the year, the conditions are extremely bad during the ‘exam season’ – the summer months.
One Good Step, along with Namma Muthuru and Power of Ten has worked over the last six months on a sustainable solution to this issue.
The programme, “Light For Education” was launched in December 2015 to provide solar-powered reading lights to students of Standard X, the crucial school completion year. In the last year 1239 students have benefited under this programme.
The programme also sought to reduce reliance on fossil fuels with emphasis on green energy.
The unique aspect of this initiative was the installation of solar infrastructure (panels and charging stations) in the school premises. The students carry the lamps home but the battery that powers the lamp can be charged only in the school. This is significant as the need for good lighting at home encouraged students to attend school regularly.
Students are asked to bring the battery that needs to be charged to school every alternate day. Once charged, this powers the lamp for 4-6 hours for 2 days.
Sharing the solar infrastructure helped make the model cost effective.
Once the students complete their school year, this lamp is handed over to the next batch of standard X students. As the life of this lamp is expected to be 4-5 years, we expect 5 batches of standard X students of 17 schools to benefit from this program.
“I am able to study and even my family has light for the first time”, a delighted Bhavna told us.
Chetan too was thrilled. He is able to prepare well for his exams. “We never had such bright lights at home before this!” he said.
It has been a wonderful learning experience for One Good Step. It was extremely heartening to see a family in the city reach out to all their relatives to help fund solar lamps for all the children of one school.
We hope to reach out to more schools over the next year to empower students and facilitate learning.
– Authored by Meenakshi Ravi