Light Up A Life With Solar

Within Cambodia, only around 15% of the population has continuous access to electricity via a reliable public grid, and most of this group is in Phnom Penh.

The Light Up A Life With Solar project aims to sustainably increase the capacity of students study time during evening hours. This project is directly linked to the Student Sponsorship and Pedal out of Poverty projects and is open to families within rural areas who are disadvantaged and fit within This Life Cambodia’s sponsorship criteria.

Currently as most children have household responsibilities, such as tending to livestock during the day, the only time available to study or do homework is in the evening. Most families rely on battery-generated power, poor kerosene or candle lighting all of which are most often used for domestic activities.

The lack of sufficient lighting available to the family seriously jeopardises a child’s ability to learn sufficiently. The provision of solar lamp kits will significantly increase each child’s access to education, productivity, and enable sufficient learning. Not only will the child benefit from the program but also the entire family will benefit from the extra light.

Our goal is to provide the scholarship students and their families, as well as any local disadvantaged child (and their families) of Siem Reap, with solar lamps or lamp kits, which would extend light hours in the evening and increase daily productivity, in terms of school work for the child and household activities for the family.

Solar photovoltaic lamps/ lamp kits offer an excellent opportunity to use this energy to provide better domestic lighting for rural homes that lack power grids or rely solely on battery generators. These solar lamps have the potential to replace candles and kerosene lamps as well as serve as additional aid to battery generators commonly used by villagers.

Students that fit This Life Cambodia’s project criteria, within the Krabei Riel Commune, are provided with solar powered lamps that may increase their productivity at night. The use of solar lighting will not only enable individual students and their families in Krabei Riel to benefit from increased productivity at night, but it will also reduce kerosene usage, which is both dangerous and causes significant pollution.

Progress

In September 2010, TLC received a grant from our friends at Aussies For Orphans to pilot the program. Solar lamps were installed in 20 family’s homes.

Data was collected from 12 families, pre-solar installation in May, 2011 over one month. Then, the same families completed weekly spreadsheets post-solar installation for the month of July.

Fuel consumption was one area monitored. There are three types of fuel in use by each family daily including kerosene, candles and car batteries. Of the 12 families TLC works with, the pre-solar total amount of kerosene used was 46 litres while the post-solar total amount of kerosene used decreased to 19 litres. 34 candles were used pre solar while post solar, there was no candle use reported by any of the 12 families. Pre-solar it was recorded that the 12 families recharged their batteries 42 times a month; post-solar this figure dropped to 16.

Pre-solar, families spent almost 17,000 riel ($4.25) per month on kerosene, compared to an average of 7,200 riel ($1.80) post-solar installation.

In regard to student productivity; research was conducted in July – during school holidays. This has impacted on the results collected, however, despite the fact that school was not in session, the data collected showed that students were spending 1 hour and 20 minutes a night studying, comparable to the pre-solar figure of 1 hour and 45 minutes.

On behalf of our scholars and their families we would like to thank Aussies For Orphans who has been our supporter to Light Up A Life With Solar Program. Without this support we wouldn’t have been able to run this program as our pilot program and also wouldn’t have been able to see the positive change to the families of TLC scholars.