Dear Graham, Andrius, Janet and all,
Thank you all very much for your postings which we all found very useful.
Our Organization had taken over three months to research on the DIY Solar
baterries to charge phones and also make good use of some other solar products
here since our electricity connections are very poor and our many villages here
are not yet connected to any electric power at all.
So far for all this time of our research, we have found that the sample you sent
to us was very good and that if we understood its uses well we will be able to
use it as a training tool for our village members to educate them on what it is
and how it can be used.
We will like to share with you as Janet has said that after we received the 100
USD from Andrius, we organised a symposium in our city on the eve of the
Independence day celebrations of May 20th that we celebrate yearly as our
national day here. This was a torch light procession where all the participants
needed to use light to walk around the towns and villages and as usual, we had
electricity failure here for three days, so we took this opportunity to teach
all the thousands and hundreds of people what the DIY SOLAR was and we were
opportuned to show the samples as you will see our own technicians in the group
handling the samples you gave on the photos pasted or attached here.
As we created awearness all over our towns and villages about this solar
battery, all inhabitants enter our office daily to see this sample and are also
asking us to tell them where and how we can get more of these solar batteries to
use here. We now were taking our time to see what to come out with knowing very
well that this introduction of the solar products will need finances more
finances to transport us round the towns and villages to show members as well as
train them on how it works.
We were finding it difficult to just start explaining what we had here
concerning this samples you gave us first without consulting you to hear your
own opinion. Another doubt we had was whether Graham could expand the
introduction of the DIY solar products by giving more samples if we now have to
carry out a broad sensitization of the products in our entire communities. We
were not sure of the availability of more products since we donot have us any
capital now to buy and stock more of these products after we must have had
enough training too on the usage. .
Also going detailly into the research we found out that in the future although
at long term, it can be possible for us to use these solar products in our
homes in a bigger scale to even light but our homes with solar. We tried to
share this idea only with Graham alone but from his response to us, we suspected
or guessed that he was not pleased with our going too far to already talk about
too much or too big when we had not known much or had much education on the
products nor funds.
From the same money 100USD which was equivalent to about 48000francs cfa in our
local currency at that time of the exchange,we did more activities in the
research and the expenditure was more than the amount you gave us because we
organized small seminars and workshops where we had to first meet technicians
with knowledge or skills about solar power usage here who started educating
us. Then there after, we had to make publicity here in the local radio and
arranged movements to eight villages around whose roads are not good now as we
are in the rainy season and transportation costs are doubled due to bad muddy
roads. Five leaders made it to these villages with the help of three technicians
as you will find in the photo. There were more photos but scanning is too
expensive If you still need a detailed report of our expenditure,we will give it
to you. We added our own contributions to it in order to completely research as
far as we wanted but still had
more to do as all our activitis involved movements which now had
transportations costs everywhere we went and lunches after gathering and
educating more women, youths and men generally in distant villages to talk about
the uses of solar batteries and show the samples.
So we are saying here that we did much on the research and will continue to
share with you all if you find it interesting to you.
Immense thanks from all of us and bye for now
Sincerely ACTWID members led by Wendi

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