Finalist for the Carter Partnership Award 2007

Carter Partnership Award summary of Village Empowerment Project

University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Peruvian Ministry of Health

For the Village Empowerment partnership

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.