Solar Today has a great article about a father and son who trek into remote villages in Nepal to install solar systems for Solar Sisters. Also featured in our article is an amazing personal video log from a group who installed solar panels for a youth hostel through the same Himalayan Light Foundation that operates Solar Sisters. Time to start exploring with solar on our backs.
Detail
You could learn how to install solar, supply renewable energy to remote villages in Nepal, and learn about this beautiful country. This months issue of Solar Today has an article by David Hill who raises $6,000 to do a trek into Nepal in order to provide remote village homes and medical facilities with lighting powered by solar. Once in Nepal the Solar Sisters program organized by the Himalayan Light Foundation trains you on the basics required to be able to transport, install and train people to use their new solar systems in these remote villages.
Reaching these remote locations isn't easy. The treks are long and hard. However, this is one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring mountain regions in the world. Helping people in remote locations who either have no light at night or who must use oil lamps (which are dangerous, a health hazard and costly), means a new world of opportunity for people at the very most hardest places to reach in the world.
As a part of offering opportunities for people to trek into Nepal with solar panels to install, Solar Sisters has developed a manual that shares what they've learned and how their programs work.
"This manual is a support designed to enable NGOs and other development organizations to replicate or adapt two innovative and successful Himalayan Light Foundation (HLF) programs, Home Employment and Lighting PackageTM (HELPTM), and Solar Sisters, both of which remove barriers to dissemination of Renewable Energy Technologies; proliferation of renewable energy systems in turn, reduce carbon emissions into our environment while increasing facilities for far remote villages.
For more than a decade, The Himalayan Light Foundation in Nepal has been implementing model programs and partners with the organizations: Sewalanka Foundation in Sri Lanka, CRTC in India and Eco Adventures in Bhutan. Disseminating the lessons learned and the best practices derived from these experiences is one function of this manual. A second function is to invite replication. The programs and this manual were made possible by grants from the Global Environment (UNOPS) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with leveraging from a Thematic Trust Fund program called SPOWTSTM; Solar Powered Ozone Water treatment SystemsTM and HLF Solar Sisters Volunteers.
GEF’s mandate, termed “OP6” (operation modality number 6) is to reduce world carbon emissions by removal of RET implementation barriers while promoting poverty reduction, energy equity and energy security in developing countries. HELPTM and Solar Sisters introduce renewable energy technologies to the poorest populations of South Asia. The recipients of these programs, generally people in remote villages, desperately need energy services. They represent the largest growing segment of our world’s un-served population and will fast become a large factor in either creating more carbon emissions or their reduction.
HLF programs respond creatively to actual village needs; they do not impose notions of development on the communities served; rather they seek to facilitate the villagers’ desires for opportunity and a better life."
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