KwaZulu-Natal, SOUTH AFRICA

BRIGHTENING LIVES WITH SOLAR SCHOOLS

The Challenge

Located on the eastern shore of South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal is the most populous of the country's nine provinces, and a popular vacation spot for Europeans and Americans.

But travel just a short distance from the sparkling beaches and plush hotels, and you’ll find impoverished communities where living conditions are dire and connection to the electrical grid is a far-off dream. Lack of electricity is particularly damaging to KwaZulu-Natal's rural schools.

Quality education is one of the keys to ending the cycle of poverty. Without literacy, numeracy, and information technology skills matched to 21^st century jobs, South Africa's disadvantaged children will have little prospect of bettering their lives.

For a school without electricity, delivering quality education is a vast challenge. The problem goes well beyond a lack of bright light for reading.  Absence of power also means that schools can’t use the technologies so central to modern education, including the computer, the Internet, and—for instructional videos— the VCR and the television.

Denied the tools to succeed in their work, the most experienced and skilled teachers shy away from schools without electricity, further exacerbating the problem. Without good teachers and good technology resources, students predictably under-perform, drop out, and ultimately join the ranks of the 30% of South Africans who are unemployed.

Building on the success of a earlier project in KwaZulu-Natal’s Myeka High School, SELF will now bring solar electricity and wireless Internet links to two additional KwaZulu-Natal schools, transforming the sun’s energy into electricity — and hope for a brighter future.

The solar power equipment has had a huge impact on the culture of learning and teaching in our school…The school dropout rate has dropped considerably. You will never understand how much difference the intervention of SELF has made in the education of an African child.” —Melusi Zwane, Principal, Myeka High School

The Solution

SELF's new Solar Schools Project will provide two KwaZulu-Natal high schools with lighting, TVs and VCRs, computer labs of 25-30 workstations, Internet access, and links to high quality distance learning resources — all powered by solar energy. 

SELF will team closely with two South African organizations to ensure local sustainability and cultural sensitivity.  They are: the Learning Channel Campus and  the Program for Technical Careers (PROTEC).

Project goals include:

• Providing access to high-quality educational videos, CD-ROMs and Internet content closely tied to the South African national educational curricula. Thanks to electricity and the technologies it enables, SELF's solar schools will have access to these invaluable resources through The Learning Channel Campus .

• Improving job-skills by training teachers and students in use of the new information technology, also providing instruction in making the most of the materials from the Internet (training provided by PROTEC and SELF).

• Creating new jobs and local expertise by training native people in the installation and maintenance of solar systems.

The Power Is YOURS...

SELF's project to bring electricity and wireless Internet access to two additional schools in KwaZulu-Natal is not yet funded.  Every dollar YOU donate is extremely power-ful in the life of a South African child!

Here are some examples of how your investment will help:

• $25 can purchase 5 compact fluorescent light bulbs to illuminate classrooms and computer labs.
  

• $50 can purchase a deep-cycle battery that will store solar electricity for use in the evenings, or on days with heavy cloud cover.
  

• $100 can purchase half of one 50-watt photovoltaic panel, which will be at the solar school’s heart.
  

• $500 can purchase a workstation for the school’s computer lab.
  

• $1000 can purchase a basic computer server to store files and software used by the workstations.

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Did you know a gift of $10 buys two efficient fluorescent light bulbs for a village school, home, or clinic?
Learn more>>>

Read a New York Times account of SELF's Myeka project here.