This month’s original short story from Chanleas Dai
December 23, 2011Rethinking the dangerous practice of orphanage tourism
January 25, 2012by Vannak Lach
Photo Credit: Vannak Lach
Electricity supply is a challenge in every rural area of Cambodia. PEPY has faced this challenge lately as it critically interrupted our Creative Learning Class (CLC) and Creative Learning Space (CLS) activities.
PEPY uses a generator to supply electricity due to the fact that there is no electricity supply in Chanleas Dai area. Since early October 2011, our generator started to supply a fluctuating electricity current that cannot be used for running our XO laptops in our CLC and CLS.
“Around 5 XO laptops and 40 plugs are broken from the fluctuating current. Students cannot use XO laptops, some lessons are suspended, LCD projector does not work properly, and number of students attending CLC and CLS also decreases because they cannot use XOs,” said Lida Loem, PEPY’s library and CLC project manager. “This is caused by recent unreliable electricity current provided by our generator.” The XO laptops are used for the CLC in Chanleas Dai junior high school to provide extra enrichment classes in addition to the standard government curriculum.
PEPY team has been trying to figure out a root cause of this unstable electricity current for almost two months. “We have consulted with several machinists and tried several solutions. Yet, it did not work out until we got a suggestion from one local machinist that we should change our dynamo—our generator consists of a machine and a dynamo—because our dynamo is not qualified to produce enough electricity to meet our demand,” explained Satra Phan, CLC’s assistant who is also responsible for this generator.
“We follow his advice, and the problem is solved,” said Satra smilingly. He adds that he will no longer need to leave his students in the class for checking the generator as often as the previous months.
A new higher-capacity dynamo already replaces the old one. Now the generator starts and the teachers and students are able to resume their activities. We are still looking for more sustainable and environmentally friendly energy solutions for power for the junior high school, but are pleased our activities can resume in the meantime.
