Kenya's SOS Children's Village Mombasa goes green

In the year 2010, the ways in which switching from fossil fuels to solar energy is beneficial to the protection of the environment need hardly be explained. And yet, the protection of the environment is not the only reason for the SOS Children's Village Mombasa to begin their transition from dependance on the public supply of energy and water to renewable resources.

Energy

Currently, SOS Children's Villages Kenya covers the electricity costs for the SOS Hermann Gmeiner Primary School, the SOS Kindergarten, the SOS Youth Facility, and the 15 houses of the SOS Children's Village itself in Mombasa, totalling some 30,000 USD per year. The new solar energy system would eliminate these costs completely. Not only is it costly to purchase electricity from the public power grid, service and maintenance of the conventional power system is inefficient and unreliable.

Even though installing the new photovoltaic power system, which relies on solar panels for energy supply, means a substantial initial investment, administrators at the SOS Children's Village Mombasa are convinced the new system will not only pay for itself in the long run, it will also provide the village with a reliable and clean source of energy. If all goes according to the schedule, the new system will be up and running by the end of 2011.

As an added measure, all electric light bulbs in the village are to be replaced by eco-friendly LED bulbs. Again, even though this type of bulb is more expensive than conventional ones, they are much more efficient, lasting up to ten years and producing light for 50,000 hours. Plus, they are made from non-toxic materials, do not produce UV rays and do not contain mercury.

Water

Another area to be tackled is the village's water supply. As the director of the SOS Children's Village Mombasa, Mr. Evans Muthiso points out, the new system will make use of two water wells within the village. "From experience, we know that these wells can reliably produce 50,000 litres of water per day. With the new system, this water will be treated and made available to all the family houses in the village", he says.

The fact that this will make the water supply one hundred percent reliable is no small matter. On several occasions, the village received water only three times per week, and even when there was water, SOS mothers could never be sure it had been treated and therefore had to boil the water before giving it to the children to drink, just to be safe. Often, the bills for water consumption were grossly exaggerated, sometimes citing five times the amount of water actually used.

The new water supply system should be ready to use at the end of August of this year, providing the children and mothers of the village with a clean and reliable supply of water at minimum cost. In addition, the energy gained from the solar panels will reduce the cost of pumping the water, making an already economical improvement even cheaper.

Planting - Recycling - Education

Further measures will include the planting of mkungu trees (terminalia katapa), which grow naturally in the region, as well as the separation and recycling of waste for the village's own benefit. For Muthiso, it is crucial that the children be very much involved in these activities, as this will teach them that taking responsibility for the preservation of the environment is everybody's business.