Micro-Solar Workshop

In this workshop we make small scale solar panels and rewire LED lights and phone chargers as accessories. We buy in solar glass and wire them and assemble them into a complete panel.

We make a 2 watt and a 1 watt panel framed in wood. At its simplest these panels can simply be clipped to the battery terminals of any radio and while the sun shines the radio runs. The 2 watt panel is powerful enough in good sunlight to run a tape player with separate speakers while the 1 watt is enough for most basic radios.

To add to this we sell two types of LED lights which come with rechargeable batteries. These can be easily recharged from our panels in a few hours and then provide between 15 and 20 hours of good light. With 500 recharges in the batteries we use and an average of one charge a week for most households, battery life is close to 10 years!!

The final accessory is a phone charger designed to fit every type of mobile phone battery.

With these three uses the Neema Crafts Solar Panel Kit covers all the main needs for electricity in rural communities. This is a fantastic development tool, impacting directly at household level. The cost of a 1 watt panel and light with batteries is equivalent to 2 months cost of buying kerosene for the average village household, making the product very affordable. On average 1/3rd of household disposable income is used on kerosene for lighting, batteries for radios and mobile phone charging in rural areas each month, so using one of our solar kits has a big impact on a families finances very quickly.

We heard many stories about how our panels and lights are used in the villages.

• School teachers who use them avoid the sore throats they used to get from kerosene fumes and report that they are now much better able to control their large classes in school as they can now raise their voice when needed without pain.
• A mother whose house burnt down when a curtain blew into the flame of the cheap kerosene lamp she used to use is now able to light her new home without fear and without cost.
• Another family are seeing their children succeed at school after years of failing exams (which cost the family dear as the children needed to repeat the year each time adding another year onto the school fees). When they used kerosene, the family could only afford to let the children study in the evening for two hours each week. Now lighting is free from the sun, they study for two or more hours every night!
• A Masai chief has equipped some of his young men who guard his flocks and herds at night from lion and hyena in the bush with Neema Crafts solar lights and now instead of using a spear, they simply flash the light in the faces of the approaching predators and send them running in fear!

We recently welcomed both the National Geographic Magazine and the Times UK newspaper to visit us to record some of these and more stories.

All in all a fantastic development tool for rural communities. BUT while this is all great, the real reason why Neema Crafts makes these Solar kits is different. In Tanzania disabled people are often looked on as a burden on their families and communities; as people who can not contribute to society in any way. When our disabled workers take the solar panels and kits out to the villages to sell and people learn that these disabled people made this, it quite simply blows their minds. They had never thought it possible that a disabled person could make something so sought after and so useful! It is a tremendous advocacy tool for us in our work trying to promote deaf and disabled people in the community.