In the last month, we’ve sent solar suitcases to three continents! Villanova Students from Philadelphia brought a suitcase to a health promotor in Nicaragua in May. Next, WE CARE Solar volunteer Irene Abagi brought a solar suitcase to a hospital in Kenya. And, the same week we sent three solar suitcases with photographer Gloria Upchurch to Tanzania. The photo shows Gloria introducing the suitcase to Bashay primary school. We also equipped Adam Thompson from ehealth Nigeria with an expanded solar suitcase. He’ll be using our suitcase to power electronic medical record systems in Nigeria.
We’ve heard terrific updates about our portable suitcase in Burma, which is helping midwives to do births near the Burma-Thai border. They’ve requested four more. We also learned that two of our solar suitcases are bringing light to health workers in Tibet! Meanwhile our house continues to fill up with suitcases, thanks to the tireless efforts of Hal Aronson (co-founder) and other volunteers including Rob Teigen and Mike Strykowski. We will be sending four to Uganda in the next few weeks…as soon as we return from teaching educators at Solar Energy International in Colorado!
We Care Solar Suitcase: Providing Clean Energy for Safe Childbirth
The We Care Solar Suitcase® provides solar-powered medical lighting and power for communication and medical devices to last mile health facilities. With documented success in multiple countries, this innovation is one approach to providing clean, renewable energy and achieving universal electrification to healthcare facilities.