Connecting Points: Lodja and Villages

Lodja, the location of the University of Science and Technology, is surrounded by multiple villages, all of which lack electricity. Most villagers cannot afford tuition even as small as what USTL charges--$300 USD/year. Were a young person to venture to our university, they would have no lodging or food plan. We want to offer equal educational opportunities to all within our area (500,000 people). 

We have constructed forty dorms for potential students. We have also planned internet cafes. We have 40 Chromebooks, but we do not have a reliable power source to connect these resources with the world wide web. Finally, we have successfully completed a program of recording and binding oral histories, and thus stocking a library. Some histories have been filmed to start a cinema industry.

We need to light the dorms, provide digital access, expand the oral history/film initiative, and provide employment and support to the students.

Our fundamental problem in Lodja is energy poverty. 

Our university is supported only by the tuition of our students, and many cannot pay full tuition. Tuition pays for professors to be flown from Kinshasa to Lodja ($800/rt) and for maintenance and development of our campus--so when it's lacking, all of our endeavors are challenged.

It was an act of faith to build forty dorms for the poorest people of our area, but we have no safe way of lighting their rooms to keep them safe and to extend their ability to study after sunset. In addition, the common room needs power to introduce the students to the wealth of knowledge available via the internet and virtual instruction from Kinshasa or anywhere in the world.

We have looked at plans for solar power and have chosen the Flex plan,  released in May 2021. This will involve a mini power grid which can light an entire village.

In addition, we are recording and binding oral histories and selecting some to be filmed, thus opening the path to the restoration of the cinema industry (we have a printer and ink and projectors and speakers). With these books, we can establish a library. 

The power station we will use goes beyond isolated solar panels with inverters. It provides enough power to light all dorms and a community center as well as an internet cafe and library with book creation. 

The  modular system we will use is a solar energy storage center comprising four power modules:

•  1500 power console and the battery connect to form the 1500 Power Station.
• The DC Power Console and the  Battery connect to form the  DC Power Station
• The battery is a Lithium-ion expansion battery, created in China. (We will ship it from China to the port of Matadi in the Congo and then take it by barge and truck to Lodja.)
• The MPPT Supercharge allows users to triple the standard 30A max charge input of a1500 or DC power station to a 90A charge input, allowing the battery to charge in about one hour. (Other chemistries like LFP or lead acid / AGM are heavier, larger, and more expensive.)

With this system, we can house students from the most vulnerable areas, provide a quality education to all of our students, and run the printers, projectors, and speakers to establish a growing library and a cinema.

We serve five groups:

1) All students and administrators at USTL. There are currently 300 students. Most live with their families. We lack books and internet access.  Instruction is given via a blackboard and chalk, and students write down the information in notebooks. If a student has a phone, they may purchase limited internet access, but it's inadequate for academic needs. We require an internet cafe--currently non-existent in our area. 

2) Professors in other parts of our country. A few of our instructors are local, usually trained in technology or medicine. However, we have to bring in professors from Kinshasa in order for our students to learn the needed material. With a fully-powered internet system, we would save the travel money by having the professors in Kinshasa give their lectures virtually. During COVID 19, there was no travel between regions of the DR-Congo. We had to make do without the experts and professors we usually use. We have learned, along with the rest of the world, that we can find ways to educate our studentbody without physical gathering. We are at a disadvantage, however, because we cannot do zoom meetings (which require an internet connection) or virtual education. During COVID19, our students did as much as they could to educate themselves with minimal instruction. We are eager to improve our faculty and bring new instructors in via the internet.

3) The poor villages surrounding our city. The distance between other villages and Lodja is long, and the roads are bad. It is nearly impossible for those in the poorest villages to attend our university. The dorms will make it possible for them to attend, and as we build an industry, will make it possible for them to pay tuition.

4) Women in our area. Though the majority of our students are men, we do have women students as well. It has been our goal from the beginning to better serve the women in our community--and especially in the villages. We are sadly aware that familys privilege their sons over their daughters in educational pursuits. With safe dorms, we will be able to educate any woman from a village.

5) Lodja population. Once we have a reliable, sustainable power source, we can start an industry so that our students can support themselves and earn tuition, which then makes education perpetual. We plan on starting a fruit juicing industry. 

6) The illiterate. The oral history program doesn't require literacy of the history giver. A literate person records and prints the history and either uploads photographs or helps to illustrate the story. It is then duplicated and bound, making the history giver a part of the effort to record the entire village history. 

7) Artists in the area. Currently, there are few art supplies and no art training. The book binding project and the subsequent restoration of a cinema open paths to artistic participation. 

Because we are specifically focused on providing power--solar, internet, and personal--to a large segment of our area which has been isolated, and because we will maintain the dorms, the internet cafe, the library (which will grow as the oral history project expands) and the power grid in perpetuity, we meet this challenge.

We pay special attention to the women of our area and bring the illiterate into the project by recording and binding their oral histories as part of stocking the library. This gives them some ownership in the initiative and helps expand the base of oral histories and films.

The dorms are built but not furnished and not connected to lighting sources or to the internet. (COVID19 and lack of funds interrupted our efforts.) We have some solar panels and inverters but no solar generator to maintain and distribute the power to multiple devices. We have 40 Chromebooks donated by Southern Utah University but cannot use them without a power source.

We have come far in preparing to welcome villagers (particularly women) to our university. We are nearly ready to house them. To do so safely and to give all of our students--from our entire province--the opportunity to learn from teachers via the internet as well as in person, and to participate in research projects and training, we need reliable, sustainable power.

We have a printer and ink for the growing library, and we have a building for the power station and for the library and cinema. 

Our initiative addresses a need which no other entity has met: expanding educational opportunities into the poorest villages by providing housing and internet access on our campus. We intend the campus and dormitories to continue growing. The available land is vast.

We educate future doctors and engineers. As we are able to house more students, a university education, including internet access, will become a realistic goal for any in our region, not just those who have money. 

Of course, students need to make money in order to support their future plans, and energy is required for this. We plan on installing a juicing industry and already have a building to house the components required.

Currently, few students from the villages can afford tuition. In addition, if a student has money for tuition and desires to become a doctor, he or she will also need money to attend a medical school elsewhere in the country and money for transportation and lodging. As we use the internet to access virtual instruction and research guides from all over the world, we can prepare our students to complete medical training within Lodja itself. 

We are at the dawn of a renaissance in Lodja, and much has been done to further our progress. Now we need to light up our classrooms, our dorms, and the minds of our students. At some point, we will have a medical school as part of our campus, making a medical career possible for even the poorest of our area.

We currently serve 300 university students. There are several thousand young people in schools throughout the region who would like to attend the university but who are destitute and will be unable to pay tuition when they are of age to matriculate.

With the solar power grid and attachments, we will be able to double our university studentbody and to serve the most vulnerable in our area, 600 people, within a year. As we add industry to our initiatives so that students can support themselves and pay tuition, we will be able to serve at least 3000 within five years.

Those numbers don't adequately reflect the true impact, however. Since we are directly targeting women and the very poor in this initiative, we are actually lighting hope in areas where residents generally live in survival mode with little reason to hope for education and certainly not for higher education.

We have been preparing to serve the underserved for years. We don't see anyone else doing it. The truth is, as we welcome in the poorest students, we are affecting all 500,000 in our area because we are announcing the POSSIBILITY for higher education for anyone who wants it. We are involving everyone in the area in the oral history/cinema industry

We introduce new possibilities for income and better education for all.

At present, we are in stasis. The dorms are built and everything is simply waiting to be connected and lit up. Access to reliable power will transport us from the past to the energetic present immediately. 

With one solar generator and multiple cables and panels, we can light up the dorms and the campus. Students from all over our region can then receive a quality education. 

Measuring the impact of our initiative will be easy. We can count the dorms which are lit; we can count the Chromebooks which are connected to the internet; we can count the number of students who are served by the community center/internet cafe; we can count the number of oral histories bound as books, and the number of films made or shown in the cinema. 

Upon installation of the power grid and attachments, our dorms and campus will become fully functional and ready to receive students who otherwise would never have dreamed of getting a university education. We will thus be positioned for greater growth. 

We are a university and receive some help from the Congo Rising Corporation (which donated the solar panel and the printer) and from Southern Utah University (which donated the 40 Chromebooks) in the USA. Otherwise, we depend on tuition to pay professors and administration. COVID19 impaired our ability to get professors from other areas of the Congo to our campus, and our students lost jobs, meaning that we were burdened with a greater financial weight. We sold land to stay solvent. 

We have 20 faculty/adminstrators. We contract construction projects with local workers.

Our numbers are as follows:

Construction workers: 20

Solar panel and inverter installation: 10

Cable installation: 10

Supervision: 3

All workers are part-time, hired per job/day except for the supervisors, who are experts in the energy installation and distribution.

Co-Head of Project: Blaise Veron On Okundji, rector of the university and overseer of dorm construction

Mr. Okundji financed and supervised the construction of the forty dorms. He sold some of his own property to do this. A native of Lodja, he returned to the area after completing a PhD in philosophy in Lyon, France. His dissertation was awarded a prize of 60,000 euros, which he used to build schools.

Co-Head of Project: David Erickson, Ironwood and Inergy Tek, USA

• Worked with USAID, European development banks, and the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to design and implement various projects in rural communities.

• Worked with  multiple solar energy companies and non-profits throughout Africa.
• Managed multiple businesses and a non-profit in DR Congo with hundreds of employees and a multi-million dollar budget. Trained the management teams over 2 years increasing monthly revenue to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Businesses included brick manufacturing, solar energy, portable solar generators, trucking, and a 5000 acre farm.
• Started a solar energy business in Ghana that provided solar and battery solutions to homes, businesses, and communities in Western Africa. Sold thousands of solar generators across the market. Partnered with GivePower.org (SolarCity/Tesla) and Buildon.org to provide power to hundreds of schools. Helped build micro-utilities in two communities in rural Ghana.

Business Manager: Aime Mbuyi, Kinshasa, DR-C. MBA from Beulah Heights/Kinshasa University. Entrepreneur. See https://www.beulah.edu/bhucongo 

Spokesperson for English: Margaret Blair Young. Ms. Young has overseen the book binding, library, and film initiatives.

We pair an American expert with vast experience working in the DR-Congo (David Erickson) with Dr. On'Okundji, who knows our region intimately. We include Aime Mbuyi (Kinshasa) as a Congolese business expert. The main workers in these projects are native to the Lodja region. In general, construction workers do not have much education, so we envision that some who will work on powering the dorms and the internet cafes may themselves participate in the university's offerings, or may spread the word to relatives in poorer communities. We frankly believe that as participants share their own life stories, the temptation to steal from the projects will be minimized. As we offer some degree of ownership in the project as a whole, we anticipate communal evolution.

From the beginning, we have planned for the dorm/power initiative to serve the women of our community, who are generally neglected and overlooked in educational pursuits. Rural villagers will almost always favor a son over a daughter when it comes to education, and we plan on a full half of the dorms to be used by women.

Because our region is extremely poor and because education at all levels costs money, the majority of villagers (men and women) cannot afford education. As we begin the dorm/power initiative, we plan on opening up greater opportunities to those who would not have had even a chance for an education.

With funds for equipment to connect us to solar power, we also connect to all of the surrounding villages and to the possibility of starting industries which can employ residents and students. We would be grateful to partner with organizations with more business experience than what we have and to be mentored by successful institutions.

Once we are connected to solar power, we can establish the cinema industry instantly, because we have a connection to Bimpa Production in Kinshasa. (The team made a film in our area.) The book binding industry an be done without finances, though we require power for printing. We will need help establishing the juicing industry. The industry itself can employ hundreds--from farmers to workers. We will transport the products via truck and then barge, selling at market points throughout the journey. There are several large centers between Lodja and Kinshasa, all of which should be eager to purchase our product.

Solve Members and businesspeople. We would love to partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or any similar humanitarian organization. We have asked people at Engage Now Africa (www.engagenowafrica.com) if they could help. They are working only in English-speaking countries, however. The DRC is French speaking. This is another barrier we have found. Many Africa-focused foundations work only in the English-speaking nations.

We work with 700 students in a K-12 school system, founded by Dr. On'Okundji with prize money awarded to his PhD dissertation.

Everything we do at Institution Okundji is innovative. Because we do not have many books, we have had our students write their life stories or interview others for their stories, and then have taught them how to bind these stories as books, using glue, cardboard, and fabric. We have no art supplies except for limited colored chalk, but we have learned to use various substances to create color--food coloring or dye from plants. 

We teach literacy and basic skills to our students, but want them to go far beyond the basics. 

All schools in the rural parts of the DR-Congo face similar challenges--energy poverty and student poverty.

We have unique resources, since we have worked with African Storybooks and have translated several of their stories into Otetela (the language in our area.) (See www.africanstorybook.org.) We have shared our books with other schools, and hope to share internet access with everyone in the area once we have secured it via solar power.

Only our schools have done book binding and art classes. However, we do not see other schools as competitors but as fellow educators. What we do for one, we hope to do for all.

We had thought to apply separately for this grant, but will do it here. 

We plan on offering participation and connection to the outer villages of our area. Our issue is with tribalism--especially the Luba tribe vs the Tetela tribe. There are also residents from the countries who invaded our area in 1998, and some bitterness in our interactions. We believe that the oral history project can be healing in all of these issues.

Our efforts to expand the campus of the USTL to include dormitories (forty have been built) are specifically designed to serve the poorest people of our area, with a special focus on women. The dorms will be divided according to gender, half for men and half for women. 

Currently, the majority of our students are male. We have already begun inclusion efforts to extend educational opportunities to women. We have programs to encourage families to prioritize the education of their daughters, and we include female faculty members at our university.