Last month members of the Little Sun Team from our offices in Berlin and Senegal visited the eco-village of Yeuma to test our first community solar mobile phone charger, large enough to serve the needs of an entire village. Located about a three-hour drive from Dakar, Senegal, Yeuma is a village without electricity, but many of its 350 residents have mobile phones.
Having no electricity meant that, in order to charge their mobile phones, they had to send them with their children to school in the town of Mekhe. The children would return with their charged phones at the end of the day, which was an inefficient and lengthy charging process.
A local technician named Ablaye Gueye was hired, who will maintain and service the charger station daily. The solar charger was installed for free and will be paid for by the villagers during a period of months. The villagers agreed on a test rate of 50 francs per mobile phone charge. There are 84 mobile phones in the village, and the solar charger can service around 40 phones per day. Once the unit is paid for, the money the solar charger makes can be reinvested into the community.
Local children were very interested in their village’s new mobile phone charging station.
After installing the mobile phone charger, the Little Sun Team went to present Little Sun solar lamps to the village chief and community members.
The villagers were very interested and had many questions about the Little Sun solar lamp.
A few of them even became Little Sun sales agents, and will continue to sell Little Sun in Yeuma and surrounding villages.
People were especially interested in the design of Little Sun, having never seen a solar lamp like it before.
Little Sun is proud to work with Yeuma community members to spread sustainable solar light in their eco-village – and excited about the possibilities that the installation of the mobile phone solar charger will bring to the area. We thank Yeuma community members for working with us.
