American Medical and Youth Teams Taking Solar Equipment and Medicines to East Africa

Twenty-seven Americans from around the country leave today for Africa with more than just their luggage?they are also taking solar panels, electrical equipment, and medicines. Shunning safaris, they will instead spend 18 days traveling around rural Uganda and Rwanda, installing solar equipment in public facilities like health centers, schools, orphanages, and community and micro-enterprise centers. Organized by Solar Light for Africa (SLA) a U.S.-based nonprofit organization founded in 1997, the travelers comprise three doctors, one dentist, eleven senior-high and college-aged youth, two solar tech experts, a filmmaker, and SLA leadership, including its founder, Bishop Alden Hathaway, the Sixth Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh. Once in Uganda, the young people will team up with a similar number of East African youth to install solar systems as they travel around the rural regions of Uganda and Rwanda. Also accompanying the Americans will be Anglican Bishop William Rukirande and Penina Kyembabasi, the personal assistant to First Lady Museveni of Uganda. A highlight of the trip will be the solar-electrification of an entire Ugandan village. In so doing, they will “light up the sky” at night where before there was only darkness. First Lady Museveni selected the village as the launch of a Village Power […]

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