Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Wonderful World of Rotary

For the past month and a half, I have spent a good deal of time exploring Rotary International and have been attending the weekly meetings of the Collegeville Rotary Club. I have also attended 2 meetings at the Bryn Mawr Rotary Club, including last night where I was the featured speaker. After evaluating the committment (time-wise and financially), I decided that joining the club would be a great opportunity and filled out an application. Now I wait for the Collegeville Club to vote me in (I hope!)

Rotary is an excellent mechanism for me to get the word out about SunPower Afrique to a large network of informed and interested individuals. While I am almost always the youngest (and usually one of 2 women in the room..) I greatly enjoy the comradery and being surrounded by people who are socially and philanthropically minded.

My project has generated much interest amongst the Rotarians I have met, and, after doing a bit of research and networking, have learned that the fundraising opportunties available for my project through Rotary are truly endless...importantly, Monsieur LARE, my lead solar technician and trainer in Togo, is also a Rotarian! He actually founded the Rotary Club in Dapaong (in Northern Togo) and has contacts at Rotary Clubs throughout Togo and here in the US. I am incredibly excited to begin linking up Rotarians around the world...Kpalime and Togo, sister cities!

In general, my presentations have been successful in translating my passion for SunPower Afrique to my audiences. I hope that my fellow Rotarians will be sufficiently inspired as to help me leverage this project with Rotary as much as possible.

Today I received this write-up from the Bryn Mawr Rotary "Coghorn" newsletter, about my presentation at their club last night:

PROGRAM
Chm. Bud Ahrens introduced Kira Costanza and her program “Sunpower Afrique” that she hopes to introduce in Togo, West Africa during the next year. Kira presented a power point program that included a bill of materials, for this $100,000.00 Solar Energy system for empowering the Microfinance Institutions in Togo. Kira had spent some time in Toga working with KIVA and FECECAV which dispenses very small (micro) loans to the locals for business and finance in their own communities. The pictures of course were worth a thousand words but the show gave us a great insight into how the people live, how they work and how the solar power systems are set up. They suffer from a severe energy crisis and have little or no utility type power available. The solar systems will permit some lighting, use of computers and telephone connections at reduced rates. The equipment is to be purchased here in the US and shipped as a package to Togo. Their electricians will assemble the Solar Power units under Kira’s guidance. This training will permit later installations about the town. There were a lot of questions so the program definitely caught our collective attention. Kira joined Collegeville Rotary (Dist. 7430) and will be traveling around her District and ours (Dist. 7450) in her effort to fund this Solar Power Afrique Energy system. Thanks to Kira for a very interesting and informative program.

Thanks to the Bryn Mawr Rotary Club for having me as a presenter last night - I look forward to continuing to work with District 7450 to fundraise for Afrique in the coming months!