Project: Solar for South America

SolarAid's superstar volunteer Carl Van Zand has recently left SolarAid's South America project. Carl will be leaving Jujuy and heading back to Tanzania soon - we wish him all the best and hope to see him again soon!

Carl has been working with us for over 18 months and was key in the establishment of our programmes in Malawi and South America. His hard work has seen the training of over 120 entrepreneurs, mentoring Brave and Prasanna to ensure the sustainability of the projects and important design development for both the products and the marketing and training materials.

We will miss you Carl!

From Katie and all the SolarAid Team

I wouldn't call Argentina a developing country, certainly not if you compare it to Malawi. So I was very curious to see the reaction to the five micro-solar products that just arrived in Jujuy. The plan is to conduct a small market study with the three sets of five products we have. These would take place in Bariloche (thanks to Gustavo from Gente Nueva) and in El Arca in Mendoza (thanks to Pablo and Eduardo).

Here up north, my plan was to go out to the communities living in the Puna, Salta and Jujuy provinces and in Tarija (Bolivia) and hope to convince myself that there is interest and need for the kind of products that proved to be so useful for the people in our African projects.

First on the list was the community of Cerro Negro in Salta province. Livorio Flores, a very socially active member of Cerro Negro, had gathered people of his community. We went through a questionnaire to find out what people use for light, how many hours per day they use their radio, how they charge their mobile phones and how much they pay for candles, batteries and kerosene. Then we showed them the five different products and how to use them.

Five of our micro-solar products being tested in our community-based market study

People had never seen such small solar panels as these. It turns out that some people have big solar panels on their homes but they were still interested in the micro-solar products.

"Many of us get our income from animals such as goats or llamas. Often we leave our houses for a couple of days with our animals. We rely on batteries for our radios and lanterns during those days. A portable product like the one you show us will save us a lot of money on batteries", said Pablo.

Some members of the community in Cerro Negro test our micro-solar products and give their feedback.

The product with the most possibilities was the most popular but many, especially the youngsters, also liked the "cool" table lamp.

More about the next community I visited in my next blog.

Being a high altitude plateau in the Jujuy region, Puna has one of the highest insolation levels in the world. No wonder that an NGO promoting solar power is already active in the area.

The local foundation, EcoAndina, recently opened a solar workshop in the area. When I went to visit the workshop, I was given a tour by Christophe Muller - a solar specialist from Germany.

"EcoAndina investigates the need for solar technology in Puna. We train people and coordinate fabrication and distribution of solar equipment. Five Argentinian companies fabricate the equipment, mainly for thermal applications, and EcoAndina distributes on a commercial basis or through donor funding." said Christophe, as he showed me the different applications in the workshop: a solar water heater, a solar dryer, a solar cooker, a solar oven.

The application of the solar oven is impressive. Sun rays are concentrated by a parabolic dish on the oven which can reach temperatures up to 320 degrees celsius. Enough to bake bread.

panels absorb energy from the sun in the high altitude region of Puna, northern Argentina

The sun really is a powerful force. To help us reach more rural communities and give them the opportunity to harness this power, please support this project.

I am now happily settled in San Salvador de Jujuy, having travelled to Mendoza and Bariloche to meet our local partners. San Salvador is the capital of the province of Jujuy, a tourist-friendly area split into four geographical regions.

La Quebrada de Humahuaca is an andean valley, spanning 150 kilometres, where indigenous people have maintained their religious beliefs, rites, festivities, art, music and agricultural techniques. Quebrada was declared a World Heritage site by Unesco in 2003. I look forward to visiting it next week when we go north for a market study with one of our partners.

Besides la Quebrada, there is Yungas in the east of the province with wet, misty, dense woods on the side of the mountains covering an altitude between 400 and 3000 m. The central and southern part of the province is called Los Valles, the Valleys, where San Salvador is located. Finally the Puna, a high andenean plateau where the sun burns during the day and temperatures drop to minus 20 at night.

We urgently need more funds for our South America programmes; to move forward and to achieve our ambitious goals. Please support us today.

Travelling to San Carlos de Bariloche brought me from the Cuyo region into the Patagonia region, comprising the provinces Neuquen, Rio Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego.

I was able to view of the endless Patagonian plains, where very few people live, before arriving in Bariloche. It is known as 'the Switzerland of Argentina' and is visited by one million tourists each year.

It is indeed a beautiful region and the centre of the town has many temptations: nice hotels, restaurants and shops for the rich tourists that mainly come from all over Latin America.

Thanks to Gustavo Gennuso, I get to see another side of Bariloche, a side that stays hidden from the tourists. Not far from the centre, Gustavo shows me poor neighbourhoods where people live in very small houses, often with up to ten people together.

"Unemployment is very high here, and level of education is low. People don´t have high hopes for a good future. There is a high incidence of alcoholism and violence within the families. With the Gente Nueva Foundation, we try to develop the poor communities of San Carlos de Bariloche." Gustavo tells me.

Gustavo is one of the founders of Fundación Gente Nueva, a foundation that establishes schools in Bariloche and aims to give poor young people a chance to work through different strategies: education and training, inclusion in the formal labour circuit and development of micro-enterprises.

One of the schools built and run by Fundación Gente Nueva in Bariloche

More about Fundación Gente Nueva - and how SolarAid might be able to get involved - in my next blog.

Carl

This is really a tribute to my friend Carl, who I worked with at SolarAid Malawi for over a year before he recently relocated to Argentina as Solar Enterprise Co-ordinator for SolarAid South America...

LEFT: Carl and I before he left for Argentina.

Carl is indisputably a workaholic and highly innovative. During his stay in Malawi, he managed to come up with very exciting micro-solar designs which are user-friendly and easy to assemble. When he thought of a new design, he never minded what time it showed on his wrist watch and went straight into business.

a Kadzuwa and Muuni micro-solar stall in Mzuzu. Products sold in this shop were designed by Carl van Zand

He ably imparted his technical knowledge to the local people. He has managed to train more than a hundred microsolar entrepreneurs. Most of these trainees have basic education which meant that technical training was a big challenge to accomplish. Carl was patient enough to see things through. He developed very simple training manuals which are easy to follow.

Carl has been a strong pillar of the Malawian project. Without pretence, his departure is regrettable but we take solace in the fact that the local people have absorbed his technical knowledge and are able to apply it practically. For Carl, leaving the Malawi project at this stage is like a dad leaving his baby when it has just started crawling. He came, he worked and he delivered. I hope that one day he will have a chance to come to Malawi again to see the fruits of his contribution. We will miss him very much and we wish him all the best in Argentina!


Carl van Zand (back) and Fred Migai of Kenya (standing on the right) with the first group of micro-solar trainees in Mzuzu

After 14 months in Malawi, arriving in Buenos Aires was a bit of a shock. Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, built by European immigrants who wanted a capital that reminded them of their home countries. As duty called, unfortunately, I could only stay two days. Just enough to get a taste of this huge city- where a third of the total population of Argentina lives.

A statute of Christopher Columbus in central Buenos Aires.

A twenty hour bus trip (luckily buses and roads are of better quality here than in Malawi) took me to San Salvador de Jujuy in the province of Jujuy, on the border with Chile and Bolivia. It is in San Salvador where I will work and live for the coming months.

In Jujuy I met with Raúl LLóbeta, consultant for Avina, our South American partner organisation which will assist SolarAid in the management of the solar project. Raúl had a surprise for me. He had arranged for me to visit all the local organisations interested to get involved in SolarAid's first solar project here in South America.

Meet Rául Llobeta, my collegue from Avina Foundation.

Two days later I got back on the bus to start a tour that would take me 2500km south into Patagonia and later 500km north of San Salvador de Jujuy into Bolivia. The first stop on my tour: the city Mendoza. That's for my next blog...

Ciao,
Carl

One of SolarAid's star volunteers Carl van Zand, is on his way to Jujuy in northern Argentina to set up SolarAid operations out there.

Carl has spent the last 14 months in Mzuzu, as a key member of the SolarAid Malawi team. He spent a few days in the London office- catching up with the team here before heading to Buenos Aires!

It's an exciting next step for Carl and for SolarAid.

From Malawi to South America. Carl van Zand moves to Argentina to establish SolarAid's operations in the region.

More news once Carl has arrived in Argentina, so watch this space!

SolarAid has recently sent sample micro-solar products from Kenya out to Argentina, with the intention of sharing our grassroots innovation and knowledge with SolarAid's South American partners. We will also shortly be carrying out market research to test the viability of scaling up our micro-solar across South America.

We have been making contact with solar companies in the region too, with a view to scaling up on our macro-solar work.

Jujuy region, Argentina. Photo by Bigeoine

Although we are currently focusing on working in Jujuy in Northern Argentina and Bariloche in the west, we also plan to reach out to Southern Ecuador, South-west Bolivia, Northern Chile and Southern Peru.

We urgently need more funds for our South America programmes; to move forward and to achieve our ambitious goals. Please support us today.

I've just had lunch with Pedro of the Avina Foundation to discuss plans for our South America solar programme. Avina is our key partner in South America and does work across the continent on a wide range of issues.

Pedro comes over to Europe every few months to drum up support for South America. I arrange for him to meet several foundations to see how they could help. We hope to have our first volunteer in South America in the coming months once we've raised enough funding to support the project - so please do chip in if you can.