On Friday the 15th of April 2012, Hazel, Nelsie and I headed to Tingloy Island to conduct community education campaigns on the Gelacio I Yason Foundation Family Farm School’s (GIYF-FFS) d.light solar project. Tingloy Island is Just off the southwest coast of Batangas, Luzon and about a 6 hour Journey from Roxas, Oriental Mindoro. Tingloy Island has minimal fresh water and electricity is supplied to the island via a generator for restricted hours. We stayed with the Barangay Captain in San Juan, who fed us well and helped us to organise our activities. Over the weekend we ran community events and got a great turn out. Some of the local fishermen were even talking about how the d.light S10 could help them with squid fishing at night.
On our return from Tingloy Island we were straight back to work. Hazel and I have been working hard on the development of our sales and marketing materials. The next step was to introduce all our fellow teachers and staff members to the d.light products. As the Farm School’s teachers will be running the majority of our solar community education campaigns it was important to equip them with all the relevant information they would need.
Hazel demonstrating the features of d.light S250 to staff members of GIYF-FFS
The following day the Teachers had a chance to test out what they had learnt from our sales and marketing training at a community event in San Rafael. In the afternoon, Hazel and I set out to talk to the San Mariano community about the Farm School’s Solar Project. Many of the store owners were very excited about the d.light S10 and S250 as it meant that they could open their stores for longer hours in the evenings and common power shortages would cause less problems for their stores.
San Rafael community members at our community education campaign
Ate Wilma (store owner) testing out her new d.light S10
On Friday morning staff members Teacher Annabelle, Hazel and I headed to Villa Rosario for another community education and product demonstration campaign. In the afternoon, we continued to give another presentation session in San Mariano, another area where the majority of the community members have no access to electricity.
Community participants in Villa Rosario
The past week has been filled mostly with presentations and product demonstrations. It has been a tiring week but also an exciting one because we got to introduce a new solution to the lighting problem in Oriental Mindoro and I am happy to be part of it.
