In November 2020, myself and a team of my colleagues at IBM Research Australia (Ramachandra Kolluri, Arun Vishwanath, Josh Andres, Peter Ilfrich, Fatemeh Jalali, Iven Mareels) received IBM ANZ Blue for Good funding to help an Australian not-for-profit organisation, Positive Aid, expand its capacity to improve health literacy and provide health services in remote communities in Kenya. The project, entitled “Project Empower”, is helping Positive Aid source and install a solar+battery system for their headquarters in Uranga, in remote Kenya.
In twelve years of operation, Positive Aid has helped tens of thousands of people receive access to healthcare and health education, while incurring an overhead of only 6%. For Positive Aid to now expand its operations, a solution for remote electricity provision is necessary. Positive Aid and its workers do not have access to ongoing electrical power, which makes it difficult to conduct effective monitoring and reporting, and limits the range and effectiveness of health literacy outreach activities — such as the use of microscopes to teach local people about germs, safe water, and most urgently, COVID-19 — life-saving matters in poor rural villages.
Today there are solutions for this, such as solar photovoltaic and energy storage systems, which provide renewable energy without the need for a connection to the grid. Our team at IBM Research Australia had been studying the optimal operation of such systems for years, and assisted Positive Aid to assess their needs, identify suitable products, and arrange a successful installation. The funding is being used for three main activities to enable this project: provision of renewable energy generation and storage; mobile health literacy outreach equipment; and site adaptation costs.
Following an extensive process of collecting quotes and advice from a variety of expert installers and suppliers based in Kenya, we have selected a system that we expect to meet Positive Aid’s energy needs for many years to come. However, solar + storage systems in Kenya (particularly in remote regions) remain expensive, and we were not able to keep system costs below the originally available budget. We now require an extra $2,000 to make this installation happen, so that we can provide ongoing benefits to the communities we support in remote Kenya.
We have set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds. If you are able to help out with this amazing project, it would be so very much appreciated!
https://www.gofundme.com/f/solar-panels-for-rural-kenyan-villages