BTN.com staff, BTN.com staff, March 21, 2015
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More than a billion people around the world today don?t have access to electricity. And that, in turn, creates major challenges in fields ranging from agriculture to education.
To help solve this issue (and many more), students at the University of Nebraska teamed up to establish the World Energy Project (WEP), a non-profit organization that builds and implements sustainable solar-power systems in developing countries.
The idea for WEP came to Ashley Jasso, then a student, during a classroom discussion about problems regarding worldwide energy access. She?d previously spent six months volunteering in West Africa, so she was aware of how a lack of electricity negatively affected entire communities.
?World Energy Project was born in an Energy 220 class,? said Jasso, a recent biomedical systems engineering grad and director of WEP. ?We were passionate about renewable energy, especially in the developing world. So, we ended up talking about forming this organization in order to implement what we were learning about in class.?
With help from classmates, professors and local solar-panel businesses, WEP embarked on its first mission.
?Our first project was to go to Mali, where I had lived, and install solar-power drip-irrigation systems, so that in the dry season, they could continue to grow crops,? Jasso explained.
After successfully completing the project, WEP started another initiative in Togo, West Africa. Jasso brought on Aaron Dittmar, a senior engineering student, to design a solar-panel system - his first time doing so.
The original intention was for WEP to go in and install the system for an off-grid high school but as the project progressed, it became more of a community effort.
?It was very humbling,? Dittmar said. ?It became very apparent that we weren?t going to be able to do this project alone. I think that the biggest thing that stuck out to me about Togo was just the community and how everyone came together to make this project possible.?
[btn-post-package]The collaboration between WEP and local electricians, stonemasons and even high school students was essential to completing the installation, giving everyone the chance to have hands-on experience. Before WEP left the site, members made sure that an electrician in the village would know how to keep the system up and running in their absence.
?Even though it is sustainable energy, it still needs to be maintained,? Jasso said. ?We train a local electrician to maintain a system so that once we leave, if something breaks, we don?t have to fly back to fix it.?
As for the future of WEP, she remains hopeful that the organization can continue to help others around the world close the energy gap.
?Ideally, the World Energy Project would like to work itself out of existence,? Jasso said. ?We would love to see the day where everybody in the world has access to sustainable energy.
?Success will be students staying in school longer, more children and mothers being saved in hospitals, and more vaccines being administered because they can keep them cold,? she added. ?There?s so many things you can do with energy that it?s kind of hard to be able to measure it all.?
Watch the one-minute clip above to learn more about the World Energy Project.
By Ashley Lemaine
