Fr. Boniface Tye, a priest in the Diocese of Gbarnga, Liberia, and friend of alumni Andrew and JP Fantina, visited Immaculata last year. He spoke to the students about the devastation that Liberia, once a very modern country, suffered from two disastrous civil wars. Most of Liberia still does not have electricity today. Roads, bridges, hospitals, all modern advances and infrastructure are gone. Fr. Boniface is in charge of the seminary in his country, where his students can only study by daylight. These young men have grown up without the use of electricity on a regular basis.
Enter Immaculata’s Solar Suitcase project, in which Introduction to Engineering students, while learning about solar energy and global energy poverty, assemble kits purchased through an organization called We Share Solar. The completed kit is a portable, stand-alone solar system that provides electrical power for lighting and charging of electrical devices. Once installed, the system captures energy from the sun via a roof-mounted solar panel. That energy is routed through a charge controller into a battery which stores the energy for use at night to power energy-efficient LED lights.
Last year through the We Share Solar organization, Immaculata’s completed kits went to Puerto Rico, Tanzania, and Fr. Boniface’s seminary in Liberia. You can see the joy that Immaculata’s solar suitcase brought these young seminarians in the picture here. This spring the engineering students will again work on solar suitcases and literally provide the gift of light to those whose education must end when the sun goes down.