Solar Cow, education for all through renewable energy

Expanding educational opportunities of underserved students through the provision of portable radio battery systems powered by solar energy at school. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on especially the serious digital divide between urban and rural areas ever since classrooms have been relocated to online platforms. Unfortunately, access to electricity and the internet has become the determinant of whether or not children receive education.

Solar Cow provides a unique and innovative solution to this issue through the provision of school-attendance incentives, power, and radio. Solar Cow is a cow-shaped charging station powered by solar energy. It is equipped with Solar Milks, which are portable batteries plugged into the Solar Cow for charging. The Solar Milks can be delivered to households for energy use and are equipped with a lamp and radio system. 

Our solution has two principal components : (1) providing an immediate incentive for students to come to school and (2) handing out radio-equipped Solar Milks to enable education even outside of school.

The Solar Cow project undertakes the following steps,

1. Install the Solar Cow in schools of rural areas
2. ONLY students who attend school are given Solar Milks that are plugged into the Solar Cow for charging during the school day
3. After school, students take the Solar Milks home and use them for flashlights, radio education, mobile phone charging etc.

Our solution enables sustainable education to children particularly in low-income rural areas where schooling is obstructed due to child labor, shutdowns, and no access to electricity/internet. Students are incentivized to come to school and can also utilize the solar-powered radio education on Solar Milks for free.

Up to this date, child labor is continuously highlighted as one of the most critical issues in developing countries including Indonesia. During the pivotal years of education, children are being sent to worksites instead of school to contribute to the family's income. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly exacerbated the problem as increased poverty makes children more susceptible to child labor.

The Director for Research and Outreach of SMERU, Indonesia specifically mentioned that 

“If the poverty projection increases to 12,4 percent in 2020 or equal with 33,4 million people, around 11 million children from poor households are vulnerable to become child laborers.” 

In 2020, 9,000 children were targeted to be withdrawn from child labor while 130,000 children have been withdrawn since 2008 through the coordination of national stakeholders involving the ministry of manpower of Indonesia.

Access to electricity is another key challenge. Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands with scattered residences which makes it difficult for many rural areas to connect to the national grid. Internet connection and appliances such as computers which are critical in the pandemic era are also a luxury for many underserved populations.

Solar Cow provides a solution for both challenges. Giving out electricity from only schools renders a tangible and immediate incentive for parents to send their children to schools instead of workplaces. Moreover, the radio function allows students to access education even outside of school. This solution can increase school attendance rates while improving the quality of education through enabling ICT education in class. 

The target population is primary and middle school students in rural areas of Indonesia. The Indonesian law stipulates that the minimum working age is 15, yet child labor is rampantly found in rural areas, dominated by the agricultural sector. Many of these children are deprived of school education to contribute to the family's income and this causes a vicious cycle where poverty continues on for generations.

Solar Cow also successfully launched in another Southeast Asian country, Cambodia, and has shown considerable improvements in the education conditions of students. We believe that Solar Cow can also address Indonesian children in rural areas by providing a strong incentive for parents to send them to school in stead of worksites.

Furthermore, Solar Cow provides electricity at schools that can be used to charge electronic devices for education. This will foster ICT education and increase the competitiveness of these rural children to earn better economic opportunities in the future. Specifically, the incorporation of ICT tools in class can considerably complement education in areas that experience poor teacher quality, a main educational problem faced by Indonesia.

With the distribution of Solar Milk radios, this solution can facilitate broadcast of educational programs containing healthcare training, sex education, sexual harassment prevention training for students to learn through the MP3 and radio.

Currently, our team is planning on visiting the rural areas of Indonesia to get hands-on experience on the educational needs of children as well as identify appropriate locations for the Solar Cow project.

The key for EdTech solutions is both accessibility and affordability so that education can be sustainable and equitable. E-learning particularly requires physical resources such as computers as well as energy resources to power those devices. The biggest challenge of EdTech is, therefore, to find a solution that can also serve the 'bottom of the pyramid,' or in this case, the students that are deprived of adequate education due to low connectivity environments and the high price of technology. 

Solar Cow renders a solution that effectively tackles both challenges of accessibility and affordability. Students do not have to pay for the installation of Solar Cow and Solar Milk. They are merely required to attend school to be eligible for receiving the Solar Milk from the Solar Cow. The radio system on the Solar Milk also enables students to take classes without constraints of location and electricity. To charge the Solar Milk, all students need to do is to come back to school the next day and plug it into the Solar Cow. 

The Solar Milk can also insert SD cards that contain educational content. The Indonesian government has embarked on a radio learning program that launched during the pandemic called the "Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI)," while all subjects are delivered by competent teachers. This solution can collaborate with programs like the RRI to download the educational contents into an SD card and insert it into the Solar Milk so that students can repetitively listen to and review class materials.

Sung Un Chang 

CEO of YOLK

The first distinguishing factor of Solar Cow is its sustainability. Specifically, it is not a one-time project but a self-sustainable business model that can persist even after the withdrawal of funds. Many international organizations have endeavored to decrease the educational gap among regions and increase school enrolment. Conventional measures have been financial assistance or distribution of electronic devices such as radios and computers to underserved populations. However, these measures require significant amounts of as well as continuity of funding. 

Solar Cow is innovative in that most of the funding is allocated to the initial fixed cost of installing the Solar Cow, and thereafter a self-sustainable market can form. The user fees will be redistributed in hiring local technicians and workers for maintenance while other costs are minimal. Thus, it is a much more economical alternative to endless cash transfers while also providing immediate incentives for parents to send children to school as the monthly battery fees are much cheaper than private charging stations. Furthermore, Solar Cow is also sustainable as it distributes renewable solar energy in lieu of kerosene or diesel.

The second innovative factor of Solar Cow is that it tackles the fundamental challenge associated with education, which is poverty. It caters to the needs of the most underserved areas by not only providing educational opportunities through radio devices and school attendance incentives but also daily provisions of low-price electricity closely related to moneymaking activities. Thus, Solar Cow is also an immediate contributor to poverty reduction. 

Our company YOLK has actively operated the Solar Cow project since 2018 starting in Pokot, Kenya and has expanded its business to Arusha, Tanzania, Kwale, Kenya and Congo as well as Cambodia in Southeast Asia.

The initial Solar Cow was consisted of only the Solar Milk and Solar Light, yet the most recent model has been upgraded to equip a radio and MP3 device for educational purposes.

The first two Solar Cows installed in Pokot and Arusha were fully funded by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea (MOFA), and subsequently did not receive any fee from the beneficiaries. 

However, after the success of the two pilot projects, YOLK is currently in the transitional period of testing out a sustainable business model where users pay a monthly fee of $1-3 which is redistributed as salaries for local maintenance jobs. 

Solar Cow is unique as its technology links solar energy with education and boosting school enrolment. 

The Solar Cow heavily relies on solar technology incorporated in the charging station as well as the technology used in the batteries. The solar panel attached to the Solar Cow generates energy that is stored in the Solar Milk portable batteries.

The Solar Milk also incorporates diverse technologies including the battery, the light, and the radio. 

• Battery : the rechargeable battery is used to store the energy delivered from the Solar Cow. 
• Light : the flashlight allows children to safely travel to and from school, and study at night. 
• Radio/MP3 : the radio is used to connect to national education programs outside of school. The MP3 can be used to listen to music. There is also an SD card inserter to carry records of educational content that will further complement students' education.

Both the light and radio are powered by the battery that is charged from the Solar Cow power station. 

The battery is also installed with custom input pins that make it compatible with only the Solar Cow to prevent misuse. Furthermore, YOLK is building up a system where we can remotely extract data in real time from the individual ID codes of each Solar Milk, enabling individual attendance check etc.

YOLK has confirmed that the Solar Cow project brings about visible benefits to students in terms of education, health and self-esteem.

YOLK's latest data analysis of the Solar Cow project in Arusha, Tanzania has revealed that the average school attendance rate of beneficiaries has increased by up to 11.4% in 2019 compared to the previous year. Higher attendance rates are directly correlated with better performance in school and economic opportunities in the future.

Educational benefits specifically involve, 

• Studying longer at night using the flashlight on the Solar Milk. 
  (Beneficiary households with children studying more than 2 hours a day increased from 9.9% to 48% after the Solar Cow project in Tanzania.)
• Stabilized and longer studying hours at schools as students have to stay throughout the entire school day for the Solar Milk battery to be charged.
• ICT education by charging electronic tools at school.

Health is also an important issue that has been addressed by Solar Cow. The Solar Milk light has become an alternative for kerosene lamps which is often the main fuel for lighting and the cause of many illnesses such as tuberculosis, asthma and cancer in developing countries. As health is also a crucial factor that affects educational performances, Solar Cow allows better environments for children to learn and thrive. 

Self-esteem was an impact that even YOLK newly witnessed after the deployment of the Solar Cow project. As electricity is an invaluable resource for parents to charge mobile phones and radios, children bringing back Solar Milk electricity from schools has become an important task that provides a huge help for the family. The parents have started to encourage and compliment their children to go to school in contrast to previously sending them to worksites. As a result, the student beneficiaries of the Solar Cow project have shown much higher self-esteem and pride, demonstrated through surveys on the satisfaction towards the project.  

The long term benefits would be the change of the entire community, where poverty is not inherited to future generations thanks to the advancement of education and health of children that brings economic growth.

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The objective of the Solar Cow project is to bring more students to school. Thus, the principle measure to gauge the impact of our project has been school attendance.

In Tanzania, the impact of the Solar Cow was monitored since 2019 November. Student attendance was the main focus of measuring our progress.

In 2019 and 2020, the average school attendance of student beneficiaries of  Solar Cow in Arusha, Tanzania increased by 11.4%. For future projects, we plan to confirm students' attendance in real time by checking the unique ID code of each Solar Milk that reveals the charging time of the Solar Milk. 

We also conduct surveys to evaluate the satisfaction of the beneficiaries using Solar Cow. One survey on 268 student and parent beneficiaries in Tanzania revealed that 97% were satisfied with Solar Cow in terms of the performance, utility, quality, and influence. Another survey conducted on 1,200 beneficiaries (600 students and 600 parents) revealed that the percentage of beneficiary households with children spending more than 2 hours a day studying has increased from 9.9% to 48%. Furthermore, low price of energy has allowed more disposable income (previously, roughly 20% of the income was used for private charging) which has allowed 83% of the beneficiaries to purchase school stationery, 37% to buy school uniforms, and 26% to buy shoes compared to nearly 0% before.

Self esteem of students, and longer school hours are also indicators that are closely being monitored after the launch of Solar Cow.

Our goal for the next year is to successfully complete a pilot project in rural Indonesia and gain data on its impacts on the educational conditions of students in the targeted area. Even is it is just a few hundred children, we aim to see the lives of these children change by going to school, having longer studying hours at home, accessing ICT tools etc. 

The impact that we aim for in the next 3 years is to expand the areas that Solar Cows have been installed. We plan to achieve this goal through the KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) project that has granted us funds under the condition of installing 12 Solar Cows in developing countries. We anticipate the impacts of increase in school attendance rates as well as daily studying hours. Moreover, our objective is to see better school performances as well as the quality of the lectures that the teachers give. 

We plan to achieve this goal by first successfully undertaking the first pilot project in rural Indonesia. With the evidence on the improvement in educational conditions, we plan to reach out to the MoEC (Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology) as well as local NGOs to increase the size of our beneficiaries to hundreds of islands in Indonesia. 

Through these endeavors, our impact goal for the next 5 years and more is to see visible change not only in school attendance and performance, but also in health and community development.

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1. Financing : YOLK is endeavoring to expand its business to the level where it can generate stable revenue and build a sustainable market. Financing is a core issue as it costs around $30,000 to install 1 Solar Cow. We are currently handling this issue through numerous measures, involving grants from diverse associations like the CES, green awards, Octava Foundation, etc. as well as government agencies like KOICA and private companies like LG Electronics.

2. Legal : Yolk needs advice on how to effectively build the capacity of local managers so that they can operate the project even when the Korean staff from YOLK are not physically present at project sites. Customs and tax when delivering Solar Cow and its parts, as well as relevant accounting, is another area in which YOLK is looking into. YOLK is currently regularly visiting the project areas to personally educate local staff and is in frequent contact with them via email.

3. Cultural : YOLK is preparing to impose a monthly fee for the usage of Solar Milk batteries. However, this could meet some cultural backlash and reluctance from the users. Furthermore, since the target population of this project is people at the bottom of the pyramid, ensuring users to pay could be a challenge. We are planning to incorporate a waitlist system so that if a certain family fails to pay the user fee for two consecutive months, the Solar Milk battery will be passed on to another family.

YOLK was founded by CEO Sung Un Chang in 2012.

Majoring in design, Sung Un Chang was first intrigued by solar energy and how it could help the world to transition out of a carbon economy. However, she found it ironic that the key strength of solar power being equally accessible to all could not be enjoyed in our daily lives, as the dominant users of solar energy were large corporations with bulky and expensive equipment. 

That moment, she discovered the need for combining solar power and design to appeal to the general public for daily use. Consequently, she invented the 'Solarade' in 2014 and 'Solar Paper' in 2015, which are the world's smallest and thinnest solar charger, easily used in daily lives to charge phones, tablet PC etc.

However, the desire to reach a bigger audience in a more equitable way was a constant motivation for our CEO to continuously develop or invent new products. Soon after, she recognized that the biggest need for solar energy lied in areas where electricity is rare. After much research, she found out that areas with very limited access to electricity while the demand could be fulfilled by solar panels with small capacity were in rural areas of Africa.

Solar Cow is a reference to how children in many African countries are sent to care for cattle in stead of going to school. The Solar Cow project initiated in 2018 and the beneficiaries are currently about 5,000 children and family members. 

9 team members under CEO Sung Un Chang

2 professors in advisory positions for international development and technology (part time)

1 Senior Engineer (part time)

2 Project Managers (full time)

2 Project Coordinator (1 full time, 1 part time)

2 Interns (full time)

Since 2018, our company has successfully managed the Solar Cow project in Kenya and Tanzania and has brought about visible change in school attendance. This achievement, soon recognized by the Ministry of Education of Tanzania and Ministry of Zanzibar, has led to further collaboration opportunities. On top of this, the numerous awards that YOLK has received have contributed to winning partnerships and funds from various government agencies, private companies, and NGOs, allowing YOLK to enlarge its Solar Cow project to 16 schools in total.

The rapid growth of YOLK was only accomplished through the hard work of all members under the common vision of making unlimited, pollution-free solar energy available to all, starting with the most marginalized people in need. YOLK is essentially a business that seeks profit, yet the core company value established by CEO Sung Un Chang is that YOLK also seeks the sustainability and happiness of humanity. As such, YOLK is a leading company not only in technology but also providing creative solutions to social and energy challenges.

YOLK comprises employees that have substantial experience in international development and technology. The advisory professors have over 30 years of experience in their specialized fields, while our project managers and project coordinators have ample experience working with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in specifically Africa. 

Based in South Korea, our CEO and team currently visit Kenya and Tanzania up to 4 times a year to coordinate projects and meet stakeholders to expand our positive impact. 

The Solar Cow project was not the initial business model of YOLK when it was founded by CEO Sung Un Chang in 2012. After graduating from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she came up with the idea of integrating technology and creative design, influenced by the classes that placed great value on the process of thinking. 

The mission of connecting solar energy to the people most in need drove our CEO to constantly develop new ideas. She recognized that 'Solarade' and 'Solar Paper' were effective in bringing solar energy to our daily lives, but solar energy still remained the preserve for affluent consumers and early adopters due to its high price. Upon gaining this insight, our CEO made a bold choice of turning the focus of her company away from this flourishing business to the Solar Cow project.

Despite having no previous experience in international development, our CEO has shown formidable implementation and leadership skills. Once she finished the conceptualization of the Solar Cow project, she took a Solar Cow prototype separated into huge luggage bags and flew to pitch at the AidEx Kenya 2018, where she received a standing ovation and award for her groundbreaking ideas. 

YOLK has implemented partnerships with government agencies, NGOs, and private companies and is currently in the negotiation process with many more.

In 2019, the Solar Cow project was conducted in Tanzania which was a CTS (Creative Technology Solution) stage 1 project funded by KOICA with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea. CTS 1 was conducted to see if the Solar Cow project is indeed effective in improving educational conditions by supplying energy. In the same year, YOLK also partnered with Scientists and Engineers without Borders (SEWB) to build a Solar Cow in Botbeng, Cambodia.

YOLK has also cooperated with LG Electronics in 2021 as a part of its CSR project named "LG hope school" to install Solar Cows at three schools in Goma city of DRC Congo.

In 2020, a partnership with the Ministry of Zanzibar was established and YOLK was selected for the P4G (Partnering for Green Growth) Partnership for grants to build Solar Cows in respectively Tanzania and Kenya. Furthermore, after the success of CTS 1, CTS 2 is being undertaken with KOICA this year.

YOLK has received funding and consultation from the aforementioned partners to install Solar Cows.

We believe that the resources and mentorship of the Octava foundation can become a huge help to our Solar Cow project in Indonesia.

While most of our current projects are situated in Africa, the Solar Cow project In Cambodia verified that there is also a market and a need for Solar Cow in Southeast Asia. As such, our company has already been preparing to newly launch the project in particularly Indonesia and Laos when we learned about the Octava Social Innovation Challenge. 

Looking into the specific areas that the Octava Foundation provides assistance in, we would incredibly benefit from the tailored support program that could assist us in determining the necessary resources to penetrate the Indonesian market.

Financial/ Legal : Funding is an essential element to our project as the initial installation cost of the Solar Cow is around $34,000. Thus, the financial resources of the SOLVE foundation can become a great catalyst for the expansion of our business. Furthermore, YOLK is need of consultation on accounting and also in areas of customs and tax entailed with large scale ODA projects exporting Solar PV and related technology.

Network Connections : The most basic and pivotal step of succeeding the implementation of our solution is to make connections and organize meetings with stakeholders. This is for funding as well as making local partners. As such, network building with government officials, international organizations, private companies looking for CSR projects is crucial.

Public Relations : YOLK would greatly benefit from global media coverage on our product. Branding strategies for promotion would increase the chances for companies and organizations to gain interest in our project.

Product/Service Distribution : Solar Cow aims to provide a sustainable service that continues for over 10 years. Thus, the logistics in distributing and managing as well as expanding our client base to other villages within Indonesia is an important task that YOLK could use assistance.