OVERVIEW

The Village Empowerment Project began in 1997 with an exploratory visit to remote Peruvian villages to investigate what such communities may need and what students may learn.  The first request – for communication and lighting in village medical clinics – was addressed the next year, when Professor John Duffy and a group of solar engineering students installed solar panels, batteries, and transceiver radios in two remote clinics and a radio system in the base hospital on the coast. Since then, hundreds of college students have teamed up to design over 75 sustainable systems in two networks of 35 villages in the Peruvian Andes, with 96 students and volunteers in total traveling to Peru (two trips a year) to help install systems along with the local Quechua residents, among the poorest in Peru.  The villages in general have no electricity, no telephone service, no space heating, biweekly bus transportation, and untreated drinking water. The systems, powered mostly by solar and hydroelectric energy, provide radio transceiver communication, lights, vaccine refrigerators, and other medical devices, water supply and purification, aquaculture fish, laptops, and science experiments in schools, clinics, and municipalities. This rural development program not only gives these communities much needed resources and with the radios in particular, saves many lives, according to local medical personnel, but it also enhances the students’ knowledge of their subject matter and commitment to service through this unique service-learning opportunity.  Fifteen courses have had service-learning projects focused on the partnership.  Research and development of appropriate technologies have also resulted from the partnership as well as microenterprise initiatives in the villages. 

Villagers from Raypa helping our team to install the water tank in the public school

GOALS

1. First, international understanding: We aim to establish a solid line of communication and good will between the UMass Lowell community and the people of Huarmey. This is a project which requires the support of people on both ends, and creative solutions from both sides. If this becomes simply a line of "charity" flowing from the United States to Peru, we’ve failed to meet our goal.

2. Second, an exploration of solar power use in the Andes: We want to work together on problems of engineering and economic development, especially in the field of solar power. We want to discover in what ways solar power can be used in remote Andean communities to improve the quality of life of the residents, and to stimulate economic activity in the community.

3. Third, service-learning: to integrate academic subject matter formally with service in what is being called "service-learning" in the literature. This project affords the opportunity to provide service-learning formally to the solar engineering graduate program and to undergraduates in engineering through capstone design courses. The impact of technology on social, environmental, and economic aspects of people's lives is quite obvious in this project. We (students, faculty, staff) also all learn how to design and manufacture/assemble systems that must work in remote environments. In the future we hope to have students, faculty, and staff from disciplines other than engineering involved and to have solar graduate students get more formal training and course credits (in psychology/sociology, for example) for this learning experience.

4. Fourth, local economic development and jobs: Several previous students in the solar engineering graduate program have started companies to transform solar energy in rural areas to produce electricity for some of the 2 billion people with no electricity in the world and to dry crops for improved product quality and added rural income. Some of our present graduate students may go on to provide similar services in other countries. There are two companies in the Lowell area that provide solar energy systems in Central America. One was started by UML students/graduates. We have been collaborating with these companies for some time. The PerUML Project provides training for students to work for these companies, adding strength to the local economy while providing basic human needs in developing countries.

We want to work slowly, analyzing each step before moving on, developing a model of cooperative, sustainable economic development that is appropriate to both UMass Lowell and to Huarmey. We want to work with the personnel and technological resources which already exist in both communities.

Most important, we want our impact to last - if we go and put in a bunch of systems, never training local people, letting the systems fail one by one, we will have made a negative impact. Slow, sustainable progress is far preferable to rapid, out of control installations.

Signal at school in Malvas: "Enter to Learn, Leave to serve"