Tek4Kids recently sent a team to Haiti for fifteen days to work on our latest projects at St. Louis High School in Jeremie. In addition to the computer education program that we are offering at St. Louis High School, we also wanted to help the school and its students by providing electric power and clean water.
Our team, consisting of Don, David, Mary Ann, Cathy and Gary, worked hard to get the water purification system ready to provide safe drinking water to the students at St. Louis High School. This system is similar to the water purification systems that we installed at St. Therese Montessori School and Brother Paulin School. The pump house and cistern construction were completed last month, so the team was able to focus on the next phase of the project – the installation of the plumbing, tanks and equipment to make the system operational.
It is very important to provide safe water in schools, because often the students have no access to clean drinking water at home. We hope to be able to lower the number of waterborne diseases and increase the health of the students. This helps the kids to concentrate and study without painful stomach problems, and also results in fewer health-related absences.
Electricity is another key factor in school development, because the power network is not very reliable in Jeremie. Most days, city power is only available between 5 PM and 11 PM, after schools are closed. In order to provide power to the school during the daytime, our team installed an inverted power system consisting of an inverter that charges batteries when the city electric is working. However, there are times where city power is not available for days or even weeks, so our team installed a backup diesel generator to compensate for these long-term outages.
