Project Detail

Electrification of two villages through the use of Solar generated power.

This project is an initiative to inspire village children?s ambitions and needs for basic lighting for their academic studies. These students use a couple of AAA batteries wired in series and connected to a wooden board with a light bulb that provides them few minutes of light to be able to read and complete their homework. As a trained electrical and electronics engineer coupled with Information technology (IT) experience, Start N Light organization has thought they need to do something to help these children. Therefore, the organization came up with the idea of creating Start ?N? light terminals to power one of these villages with their little available resources supported by the village chiefs and their council of elders and the village youths.

START ?N? LIGHT: is a unique, simple and cost-effective form of power generating system for rural village communities, schools and medical facilities as compared to Conventional sources of electricity delivered through a national grid which are prohibitively expensive and do not have the potential to reach these targeted deprived rural areas for years.

Solar generated electricity (photovoltaic or PV) is a cost effective, reliable alternative that is also available. However Solar alone cannot fulfill most of the energy needed by consumer during the 24 hours power demand. Therefore, Start N Light in concert with village communities explores further to add the use of other sources of clean energy alternatives unlike the expensive national electric power distribution grid. Start N Light consists of individual stand-alone system allowing it to be scaled to any size or budget. Thus, it can be tightly focused on specific applications for maximum effect and immediate benefit. It is a mix renewable source of energy that has low or no environmental impact.

Start N Light aim and objectives are mainly focused on providing 24 hours off-grid electricity power to an additional of two (2) village communities in Sierra Leone for better living conditions and create jobs for a better village life.

Objectives:
1) We intend to build hundreds of ?start n light? electric power supply terminals of 5 to 15 KVA in each village with a mix renewable alternative sources such as solar, wind and micro-hydro power
2) Train rural community on basic electrical and electronics design, installation and maintenance.
3) Support local business enterprises that create village commerce to develop community economy via powering mobile phone charging centers, local diary shops, and mini market for local fresh produce.
4) Install various models of Start N Light terminal for home in order to assess the interest in the systems, the ability to pay for them, and the steps necessary to create a business.
5) Perform a full socio-economic survey to 2 villages to determine needs and to form a baseline from which to measure objectives.
6) Research and determine cost-effective and sustainable communications options for villages, including Start ?N? Light-powered radio telephones, satellite communications, internet, etc.
7) Provide general support to villages in the following ways.
? Lights and vaccine refrigerators for health clinics
? Lights and computers for school classrooms
? Streetlights for security
? Radio phones and/or internet connectivity
? Micro-enterprise centers
? power well pumps to augment village domestic water supply
? Home lighting

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

START N LIGHT (SL) LIMITED

Country:

Sierra Leone

Area Of Work:

CapDev
Climate Change Mitigation

Operational Phase:

OP6 -Y4 (Jul 18 - Jun 19)

Grant Amount:

US$ 30,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 19,500.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 22,500.00

Project Number:

SLE/SGP/OP6/Y4/STAR/CC/29/08/2018/35

Start Date:

10/2018

End Date:

9/2019

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

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Women tranporting local materials to support project work

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Project Characteristics and Results

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples

Start N Light S/L Ltd coordinates and collaborates with all the stakeholders within the targeted communities even though they are indigenous people as electricity is very important to their lives. To further promote the inclusion of Indigenous people, the awareness raising exercise will be done in their local language for the benefit of all. Also, specifically for this project a steering committee will be formed of which the traditional chiefs of the two targeted villages will chair on a rotational basis. Furthermore, a Memorandum of Understanding will be developed and signed specifically for this project that will describe the roles of partners that will be involved in the implementation of the project. This MOU will set how the indigenous people will be involved in the implementation process regarding meetings, reporting, monitoring and evaluation and general coordination.

Gender Focus

Start N Light S/L Ltd, volunteers and the project steering committee members are about 50% women and 50% youths that fully manage the affairs of the organization including its affiliated entities. These youth and women have been working together for the past year implementing support received from different organizations, donor and government. They have built a very much cohesive force that strongly plays the role of advocacy and women empowerment over the years. This project is expected to build synergies with the previous interventions that have supported the women groups to fully implement projects that are agricultural oriented with a clear mindset that women and youths have been categorized as the most vulnerable group within the society and communities where these projects operate

Notable Community Participation

The approach of this project is a bottom-top which means the project is virtually owned by the communities and members of the different targeted communities must be part of the design of the project through series of meetings and consultations. This project will be implemented by the different women and youth groups coordinated by the project coordinator. The project committee will comprise of 70% of the community people and this committee will be responsible for the monitoring, supervising and advising on the implementation of the project. The community stakeholders and the members will ensure regular supervision and monitoring of the project at the community level while the executive body will provide the oversight to guide the attainment of the core deliverable as highlighted in the monitoring plan

Inovative Financial Mechanisms

The knowledge management strategy and plan objective are to ensure that the project support capacity of the target beneficiaries of 1,000 individuals with the tendency of increase replication to some of the indirect beneficiaries. The methodology is purely based on demonstration and illustration to build confidence of the beneficiaries to be able to take the technology somewhere else and replicate.

Capacity - Building Component

The organization comprises of local farmers that have decided to embark on Climate smart farm agriculture but need to be strengthen in the following areas: New farming techniques on agro-forestry Climate change adaptation mechanisms The use of modern equipment to cultivate large land area More alternative livelihood techniques Expansion of knowledge on stock-taken and reporting exercise Sustainable forest management techniques

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

The project result will be communicated during the quarterly update and implementation review undertaken by the organization on behalf of the entire affiliated entities to ensure transparency, consistency and accountability of set deliverables identified as part of the indicators used to measure success.

Policy Impact

This project will complement the Sierra Leone?s Climate Change Policy that has a mission to strengthen national initiatives to adapt to and mitigate climate change in a participatory manner that involves engaging all sectors of the Sierra Leone?s society with appropriate and adequate consideration for the women, the youths, the aged, the poor and other vulnerable groups within the overall context of advancing sustainable socio-economic development in Sierra Leone. It is also in consonance with the objectives of the Climate Change policy as stated below: i. Implement gender sensitive mitigation measures that will promote low carbon as well as sustainable and high economic growth; ii. Enhance national capacity to adapt to climate change; iii. Raise climate change related science, technology and R&D to a new level that will enable the country to better participate in international scientific and technological cooperation on climate change; iv. Significantly increase gender sensitive public awareness and involve private sector participation in addressing the challenges of climate change; v. Strengthen national institutions and mechanisms (policy, legislative and economic) to establish a suitable and functional framework for climate change governance.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

When the project is completed, over 100 jobs will be created either directly or indirectly for the youths and women It will help save government from budget deficits and improve access to quality education. Improve regulation or cultural preservation, improve health and safety , improve air and soil quality, improve biodiversity by reducing the rate of deforestation for the purpose of producing char-coal and wood for fuel. The project works with local lending institutions to establish a plan for a revolving fund/micro-credit scheme that will allow villagers to pay for energy used and be able to purchase home kits on a market-demand basis. Organize chiefdom level soccer match competitions for the youths to generate funds for their village community development. Design a Micro-Enterprise Center for women business ventures, establish organizational structure, methods of including businesses, collecting fees and managing centers in the project village. Monitor and evaluate the technical, financial and organizational operation of the centers to inform the design of a more lucrative business centers

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Indicators

Biophysical

Number of innovations or new technologies developed / applied 1

Empowerment

Number of CBOs / NGOs participated / involved in SGP project 4

Empowerment

Number of indigenous people participated/involved in SGP project 200

Livehood

Number of individuals (gender diaggregated) who have benefited* from SGP project 20

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