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Bougabou Village Running An Indiegogo Campaign To Support Their Rural Solar Power Electrification Project

by Milicent Atieno
Bougabou Village Running An Indiegogo Campaign To Support Their Rural Solar Power Electrification Project

Bougabou Village Running An Indiegogo Campaign To Support Their Rural Solar Power Electrification Project

A village in Togo, called Bougabou intends to set up a solar power project to supply its villagers with electricity. The idea came about when Arvo Lee moved to Bougabou over two years ago. He noticed the sad state of affairs the villagers had because of the lack of electricity and he wanted to help.

Bougabou read an article about the Barefoot College based in India that offers training to women from all over the world on solar electrification. He hatched up a plan on how to get local women from Bougabou into the Barefoot College so that, they too could become solar engineers; using the internet, YouTube to be precise. Arvo took a video of the villagers and the project he had in mind of solar electrification and traveled to Togo’s capital when he could find electricity and internet to upload the video to YouTube.

Fortunately Barefoot College got wind of their video on YouTube, and they were impressed by the noble intentions of the villagers. So much so, that Barefoot College sent two invitations to the Bougabou villagers to have two women go to India and learn about solar electrification for villages that are off grid.

Bougabou Village Running An Indiegogo Campaign To Support Their Rural Solar Power Electrification ProjectTwo women, Mami and Rahama, were chosen from Bougabou village, to take up the opportunity and travel to India to learn what Barefoot College had to teach. You should note that both Mami and Rahama had never left Togo before, and could only speak a Togolese local dialect, Coticoli and no other international language. Mami and Rahama flew to Tilonia, India where they were taught all there was to teach about the solar electrification, through sign language because of the language barrier. The two women learned everything there was; how to assemble the solar panels, build circuits and light up homes all sign language.

After a successful learning experience, the two women went back to Bougabou village and shared their knowledge with the rest of the villagers. Now the villagers are armed with the right knowledge to adopt solar power-technology to electrify their village. However, to set up these equipments they face a major setback, lack of capital to buy and install the required solar power hardware and equipments.

Arvo together with his team have set up a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo seeking to raise at least $27,000 before July 11th, 2014 (just 9 days remaining). They request your financial support in order to make their dream a reality.

To give your financial support or spread news about their campaign on Indiegogo, follow this link.

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