Fundraising for African prisons project

fundraising for african prisons project

One of our good friends, Alex is the founder of the African Prisons Project (APP). It’s a soon to be registered charity to improve the living conditions of prisoners locked up in some of Africa's highly overcrowded prisons (often housing seven times their original capacity).

APP promotes education and health in African prisons, by building libraries and renovating medical facilities within the prison environment. Past projects have been in Kenya and Uganda, where they've installed new windows, lighting and furniture in prison cells. They also rebuilt a prison library with over 7000 books flown in from the UK and created a 60 bed sick bay (read about their prior success here). Alex has recently been awarded the graduate of the year award for his work .

before and after the rennovation

september 2007 update

After spending the summer fundraising to start the solar project, Shoko from bettergeneration went out to Uganda with a solarmate lighting kit and some energy saving light bulbs to assess the feasibility of solar lighting for the project, joining the rest of the APP group who were looking at ways to improve the welfare and health of prisoners. During Alex’s stay until April 2008, the African Prisons Project will be refurbishing the remand prisons hospital and the 200 bed Ugandan prisons referral hospital at Murchison Bay Prison. Currently neither of the hospitals have plumbing work and only certain rooms have any electricity.

using solar power

Solar Panel The African Prisons Project, as the name suggests operates in African countries where the sunshine is pretty abundant. Uganda is no exception and a lot of sunlight is received within the prison complex. Meanwhile, the national grid is pretty unreliable and suffers from something called "load shedding" - where different districts of Kampala (the Ugandan capital) spend an evening without electricity because of insuffient power capacity.

Our idea is to help make the APP's renovation work greener, and more energy-secure, through installing solar panels at the facilties. The 10W solar panel which we took to Uganda was placed on the roof of the hospital unit in the maximum security prison to provide the overnight patients with a source of lighting.

However you look at it, solar energy is pretty expensive, so we're fundraising for the project by selling energy saving light bulbs, like the ones on this website, at local fairs and events in south-west London. So, if you're from the London area and interested in helping the African Prisons Project by purchasing some light bulbs or know any events/fairs that the project could be involved in to raise money then drop us an email, we'd love to hear from you.

African Prisons Project Website - www.africanprisons.com

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Shoko said:

Julian, thanks for the idea. I think at the moment, there are so many possibilities of where this project could go and how much it can achieve. The initial project is going to be in Zambia in September and I'll be going out there to see how much of the new developments can be solar powered...although this will depend on the fundraising. We understand that there are so many countries in African who'll benefit lots if this initial project is successful! We'll update this page, to report back how much we powered through solar, so watch this space!

May 15, 2007

Julian said:

I would like to submit a primary school in Babati, Tanzania as a good place to run a 2nd project to light up classrooms at night to run teacher training sessions to help improce the quality of the teachers. The requirement for the power is for one 40 x 20 ft room with sufficient lights and a computer /projector.

Can your circuits supply enough juice to meet this demand?

May 14, 2007

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