Received funding from 2023 R8/HTB Community Support Program.
Country
Nigeria Section SIGHT Group (SIGHT078)
Sustainable Development Goals
Summary
The need to provide adequate electricity and security surveillance for students in Girls’ child secondary school Awka cannot be over-emphasized. In this school just like most public boarding secondary schools in Anambra state, once there is power outage from the public power supply company in the night, the students are left with no option but to use lantern and tourchlight in the reading rooms and in their hostels. This has exposed the students in the past to snake bite, possible rape of students by intruders, poor vision as a result of reading with poor light and overall bad effect on their academic performance. Girls secondary school, Awka is a public boarding school with an average population of 1,200 students out of which 650 are day students while 550 are boarding students. The school depends solely on the public power supply which supply to the school is an average of 9 hours daily. Though the school has generator but fund is not always provided by the government for fuelling the generator especially with the hike in furl price in Nigeria so the students practically stay in darkness resulting to the use of tourch and lantern whenever there is power outage from the public electricity supply company. Providing solar electricity for the school will also promote STEM education in the school as the electricity peovided will also be used to power their computer and robotic laboratory. This project will also involve CCTV that will be powered by the proposed solar electricity system to provide adequate surveillance of the school compound against intruders and to protect the students.
Impact
This project installed a solar system comprising of 12 solar panels and 4 inverter batteries to provide this girls secondary school with practical solutions to address challenges associated with unreliable electricty. This intervention allowed the girls to have access to light for their studies. The project also installed 16 CCTV cameras (three of which are solar powered) to improve security around the school. This improved the overall environment for 1,200 students and staff in this school.