|
Gordon D'Arcy, The Irish Connection, September 2006
Rugby international and Lions star Gordon D’Arcy has just returned from visiting GOAL’s pioneering solar light installation program in West Bengal which has lit up the dark lives of a remote and poverty stricken rural area in India, and reversed the community’s fortunes, writes D’Arcy.
There is an enormous demand for rural electricity in India, with more than ten million families in India’s four Eastern states still unconnected to the electricity grid. Constant energy shortages and blackouts are a common problem for those connected to the grid who in urban areas face power cuts up to 6 or 7 hours a day, with rural areas suffering blackouts for as much as 20 hours per day.
For the past three years, GOAL has been working in the Sunderbans region of West Bengal- which lies at the mouth of the Ganges, and is a three hour drive from Calcutta, India. A desperately impoverished and isolated region, traditionally huge numbers of locals migrate to Calcutta where they typically end up living on the streets, destitute and homeless.
It is this eye-opening sight that I witnessed first hand following an invitation from GOAL’s John O’Shea to see the work that GOAL are doing at the coalface of poverty in Calcutta, India.
Until recently, life without electricity would come to a grinding halt after sunset in these humble villages of 14,500 households (83,000 people) situated in the heart of the Sunderbans.
Inside mud-and-clay homes, children used to study in the dim, smoky glow of a kerosene lamp.
This all changed with the installation of innovative low-cost, energy-efficient lights that are powered entirely by the sun. Installed by GOAL through a partner Indian-based nongovernmental organization, part of the program focuses on bringing light to rural India, erecting lights near public places and community water sources, and in schools, hostels and households.
Along with building schools, and ensuring that residents have access to medical resources, GOAL hoped that solar lighting projects would make the island more appealing for the people of the Sundarbans in an attempt to stop them moving to the city to add to Calcutta’s marginalized hut dwellers on the outskirts of society.
Millions of Indian households use kerosene to light their houses – a fuel which is dangerous, dirty and consumes nearly 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household's budget. And it causes the deaths of thousands every year. At €255 each, solar lights have been installed in nearly 300 homes to date by GOAL through a local partner.
But it isn’t a hand out. Households benefiting from solar power contribute 20% of the total cost and the remaining 80% cost is paid by families in easy installlments over a period of 9 to 10 years. The scheme gives people a real sense of ownership. It was Indian people helping Indian people.
In other words families can afford to pay for a solar light paying per year what they would normally spend on candles and paraffin. It seems like a bargain to me.
With 32 primary schools and eight secondary schools in the project area, enrolment of students exceeds space available, and children are forced to attend classes in dark oppressive and crowded conditions.
GOAL’s provision of solar lights in 18 primary schools and five high schools, have seen an increase in school attendance, and girls in particular are now more willing to attend.
Before these lights, kids couldn’t do their homework in the dark, and the teachers were generally uninterested in their work on account of the dark and dingy conditions they work in.
At night people using tube wells are extremely prone to snake bites, and women were open to danger by venturing out in the cloak of darkness. Establishing solar lights at community drinking water sources means that the villagers can fetch water even after sunset. To date some 55 community solar lights have been installed around wells, with a further 50 under construction. The local community is educated by GOAL officials to make the most of the new lights, and in the maintenance and repair of solar lighting systems.
Children can now study at night time, elders can manage their chores better. Life doesn't halt anymore when darkness falls.
In a separate region of Calcutta, West Bengal almost all of the non formal education centers located in slums and squatter colonies have no electricity or are using electricity illegally to run their lights and fans.
I saw first hand the conditions in these centers that I visited. The enthusiasm of the kids to learn and their love of music blew me away. Yet they’re forced to spend their class hours in hot oppressive conditions, which makes learning almost impossible.
Wires and cables are often strung across beams, under the roof, over bamboos and run across floors creating and extremely unsafe and hazardous environment for the children.
With a population of roughly 18 million people Calcutta is already massively overcrowded. Because most of these centers are located in congested areas and constructed out of highly flammable building materials – they are the definition of a fire hazard.
Possibly most worrying is that teachers and children are not aware of the risks and do not have contingency plans in the event of an emergency.
Since a recent tragedy in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu left over 100 children dead when a fire that broke out on school premises, the Indian Government is attempting to impose health and safety regulation in all schools in the country. But the sheer scale of the problem is massive.
Here GOAL is funding the provision of safe electrical supply in 160 non formal education centers, where some 10,000 children attend, using environmentally-friendly and renewable energy systems.
These can be easily and cheaply maintained to provide a healthier and non-pollutant environment for the children, and fire fighting equipment and first aid kits are provided as part of the program to compliment the health and safety awareness workshops.
I really think it’s important to tell people that the Irish concept of poverty in Calcutta, the image of people living in shacks on the side of the street, doesn’t describe the slums where the real poverty is. Most people don’t know that those living on the side of the streets probably have some source of income, a stall, whatever.
People in the slums have nothing, and a light lights up their lives and means life doesn’t have to stop when the sun light goes down.
GOAL, has rescued 70,000 children from lives of misery and abuse on the streets of Calcutta, and is supporting a further 20 local organizations to provide healthcare, water and sanitation and education to thousands of the poorest of the poor who live in difficult conditions in the urban areas surrounding Calcutta.
If you would like to donate to GOAL, please phone GOAL USA:
137 5th Avenue, 9th Floor,
New York, NY 10010, USA
Tel: 001 212 831 7420
Gordon D’Arcy plays for Rugby international and Lions and visited GOAL projects for one week, and was accompanied on the trip by internationally acclaimed tenor, Paul Byrom.
|
