“Take a gap year and save the planet!” This could be the motto of the Kenyan based organisation “Ecofinder”. Founded in 1995 the Kenyan grass roots organisation helps communities around Lake Victoria to lead a more sustainable life. GLOBAL IDEAS has invited Nicolas, one of Ecofinder’s numerous volunteers, to write about his experience:

What do you need for a succesful small-scale solar lamp business?

There are two important things:

First: Highly motivated and convinced people who know that what they are doing will improve their lives and help to protect the environment. And second: Affordable solar lamps of good quality and longlivety.

Ecofinder started his solar lamp projects with 80 “Tough stuff” lamps. But unfortunately we had problems with faulty lamps after just three months. Our “Solar Lamp Entrepreneurs” could not rent as half as much lamps as before. Their business were in danger.

We changed the lamp trade mark. Our new lamps are from “Sun King”. The lamp’s quality is much better. They more or less rescued the project. It was possible to increase the number of solar lamps. At the moment 140 solar lamps from Ecofinder are used in areas around Kisumu nearby the Lake Victoria and the number is rising.

Because of the problems we had with the old lamps, we started buying lamp kits that have to be assambled. Organizing this is my task at the moment. We want to establish a Solar Lamp Workshop where employees learn to assemble the final lamp.

That would create more positive impacts on the community:
Not only we can offer affordable lamps, we would also offer new jobs for unemployed people. In conclusion it is possible to provide more and more people with solar lamps. Furthermore it would be obvious for everyone that eventually broken lamps could be fixed in the workshop.

I hope that my task, the workshop, will be reality in future.

“Take a gap year and save the planet!” This could be the motto of the Kenyan based organisation “Ecofinder”. Founded in 1995 the Kenyan grass roots organisation helps communities around Lake Victoria to lead a more sustainable life. GLOBAL IDEAS has invited one of Ecofinder’s numerous volunteers to write about his experience:

 A lot of people especially in developing countries have no acess to electricity. That’s why most of them use kerosene lamps for at least a little bit light at night. But this is quite dangerous because of the open fire and it’s unhealthy for the people because of the smoke. Therefore Ecofinder started a very interesting project, the “Solar Lamps Rentals”, in March 2012.

The project’s idea and structure is quite simple but very efficient:
After a training about small-scale business and solar lamps, Ecofinder provides a new “Solar Lamps Entrepreneur” with a starter pack of 10 solar lamps. Now he can rent them every night to his local customers and charge them during the daytime. The only condition is that he will pay back 25% of his income to Ecofinder until the lamps are paid off and that the price for the lamps a night is below the local common price for kerosene lamps.

With the earned money Ecofinder is able to spread the solar lamps project and to buy new lamps for new entrepreneurs. One of my first tasks was to put the repayment’s bookkeeping in order and to assign it to an excel-softcopy. After this office work I could visit and meet all our eight “Solar Lamps Entrepreneurs”. I asked them about their running business, problems, wishes and how much solar lamps they would need more to provide the demand of all customers. The response on the last question was clearly. The market for affordable solar lamps is huge. It’s environmental friendly and you can even earn your own money with the rentals. A perfect project combination of ecological and economic aspects.

But you can imagine, it is’nt everyhing perfect from the very beginning. We have also some problems, more information the next time.

“Take a gap year and save the planet!” This could be the motto of the Kenyan based organisation “Ecofinder”. Founded in 1995 the Kenyan grass roots organisation helps communities around Lake Victoria to lead a more sustainable life. GLOBAL IDEAS has invited one of Ecofinder’s numerous volunteers to write about his experience:

Hello, my name is Nicolas Kawerau from Germany. Currently I live in Kisumu, Kenya where I work as a volunteer with the Kenyan organisation Ecofinder for one year. I am 18 years old and have done my A-Levels this year. I know already what I would like to study: “Renewable Energy Technologies”.

To live and behave sustainable on our earth is a big challenge. You can hear the expression “Sustainability” everywhere. Everyone says it is essential and very important for our future – but the problem is you can hardly see sustainable measures anywhere: We pollute the air, we pollute the soil, we pollute the water with our waste, we destroy the world’s surface.

Everyone can start saving the planet now

It’s fine that a lot of people know already about these issues but most people don’t change their behaviour. They think it wouldn’t have an impact. It’s true that no one alone can change the world. But it’s false to believe that a single environmental friendly contribution would be nothing, every little contribution is important.

I am a volunteer for Ecofinder Kenya because I want to start giving our world community a sustainable contribution towards a greener environment. One of my tasks here in Kenya will be to help that electricity only comes from renewable energy sources. The sun provides enough energy, we don’t have to take non-renewable resources like coal, oil, gas or radioactive stuff from the earth for generating power.
Think about your conribution towards a greener environment and try to start as fast as you can! With Ecofinder I will join in and start projects about the spread of renewabel energy sources.

For more information on how to become an Ecofinder volunteer yourself visit the organisation’s homepage: http://www.ecofinderkenya.org

If you’re familiar with biomass, you know that an increasing amount of food products are being used to generate energy – from diesel fuel to electricity and heat, scraps of corn, soy and other crops have become big business.

But students at a technical school in Sardinia came up with a novel idea: using grape skins to create a photovoltaic system. According to the students’ teacher, who helped them develop the project, the skins of grapes contain photovoltaic power cells – and unlike blueberries, grapes are affordable and the skins are left over after wine production. The students are hoping their innovative project will give them an edge at the EU Contest for Young Scientists this September in Bratislava, Slovakia.

No, no. Not what you might think. With a summer just as miserably rainy as the ones before and a winter mild but overcast as ever, Germany probably has not clocked more hours of sun shine than usual last year.

But price hikes in fossil fuels and plummeting costs for solar energy systems have lead Germans to opt for solar energy big time in 2011. 18 billion kilowatt-hours to be precise. That’s a staggering 60 percent more in solar electricity output than the previous year, the German Solar Industry Association announced. In 2011 Germans slapped a record number of solar panels onto rooftops and walls of their homes, public buildings and industry installations. By November the one Millionth photo-voltaic system was connected to the grid.

What’s more, even from the economics point of view nuclear power is beginning to look decidedly unsexy compared to solar power – something that die-hard supporters of nuclear hadn’t deemed possible in the foreseeable future. And that’s not just because better economies of scale and new technology are lowering the price tag on solar. Not least due to Fukushima new nuclear power plants have simply become uninsurable.