Sustainable Clean Energy Project
For almost a decade, we have built a sustainable educational environment for children in the Kibagare slum and power sources are a critical factor in our students’ success.
Informal settlements like Kibagare host dense populations with few public services - including basic amenities like water and electricity. Kibagare, the home of St. Martin’s School, depends on poor quality, inconsistent, and expensive energy. Every week, the residents of Kibagare spend 1.5 days without power.
This not only affects the community’s ability to turn the lights on - but limits St. Martin’s ability to keep all of its students nourished from the kitchen, educated in the computer labs & classrooms, and inhibits their access to clean water as they are all dependent on electricity.
Technology and the internet are critical components to the St. Martin’s curriculum, and the unreliable power services prevent teachers from educating and students from learning.
Following the success of our Clean Energy project, Kuumba Development is committed to finding and implementing a sustainable solution to the energy disparity in Kibagare - Solar Power. Our latest proposal recently funded will leverage solar panels to power the entire school - depending on the sun, not the public infrastructure, to keep electricity flowing.
In the last 3 years, we have been able to successfully have St Martins School in Kibagare on clean and reliable Solar Energy thanks to our generous donors and partners.
The first phase of Solarizing the school was done in 2018 with the borehole solar installation. Through awareness creation of the needs on the ground and in particular the high electricity costs, unreliable power, power outages week in week out and the negative impact this had on the school learning especially for the students and teachers having computer lesson the idea of a phased approach was floated with the intent of having the whole complex on Solar Energy.
We did the second phase in 2019, in this phase we were able to power the Primary school computer lab using Solar. The computer lab has 40 Desktops and the students have their classes Monday through to Friday for an hour every day. With reliable and clean power source, they are guaranteed of having uninterrupted classes and enough time to accomplish set goals.
With the 2019 rollout of our phased pilot solar project being a success, and the savings the school made in the first two years, a fundraiser to help with the next phases of this project was initiated and we were lucky that we were able to raise enough funds to complete the remaining phases.
As of today we are proud and grateful to each and everyone who has made this a reality, St Martins School Complex is fully solarized and this will greatly improve the learning outcomes and also help the school in reducing the high electricity costs, have clean and reliable power and also in environmental conservation.
