EPI - Ministry of Education and Lighting Africa

Ministry: The first few days during my April - August 2008 visit, JJ, Kweku, Solomon, and I met with the Ministry of Education.  I presented the concept of Empower Playgrounds to the ministry in a powerpoint format, and JJ presented on the zipline development.  There were nine prominent ministry members there.  They were all very supportive and had many questions.  They loved the idea and the head member stood up at the end and said we have their support all the way.  They then selected 15 schools for us to visit and planned on days to meet us out in the villages to show us the schools.  We will ultimately pick five that will receive playground equipment.  The MPA students also came to the meeting with the ministry.  They helped gather information from the schools and villages for us so we could select the five schools.  

Lighting Africa Conference: The MPA's saw a sign on the side of the road about the Lighting Africa Conference and one of them had the presence of mind to snap a picture.  Good thing too, without that picture we would have never found it, and if they hadn't seen the sign we wouldn't have even known that it was happening.  They arrived the day it was ending and give us the location when we met up with them to give them details about the Ministry meeting.  We caught the last day of the conference, but we were still able to make some contacts and learn some valuable information.  We learned that what we are doing is not unique in terms of the electric lighting, but only in terms of the power generation.  Most people are using solar panels, and one group had a small pedaling machine. They had information about powering various electronic devices that we haven't even looked into yet such as TV's and cell phones.  We split up and worked with a couple of different groups that were planning various implementation ideas.  I went with the NGO group and JJ found one about Carbon Financing.  One thing we hadn't thought about before is that there is a possibility of figuring out what our carbon offset is and selling carbon credits to help with costs of equipment and lanterns.  The conference assured me that renewable energy IS a major concern in Ghana, since it was such a big deal and sponsored by the world bank and held at a 5-star hotel in Ghana.