Climate change has been recognized as “a force capable of literally ‘undoing’ decades of development" (Pettit, 2004). According to the US Ambassador to Senegal, Jim Zumwalt, climate change is one of the key areas of concern in development in Senegal. As global education prepares students to take action to solve pressing problems, it is imperative that all students study climate change as a component of climate justice, in which the ethical and political considerations are taken in equal measure with climate science.
Project Goal:
The goal of the Climate Justice project is to promote student-designed solutions and advocacy for climate justice in three school communities in the United States and Senegal.
In order to achieve this goal, this project will:
Create and optimize solar mobile device chargers as an alternative energy solution for US and Senegalese communities;
Train students on the use and application of locally-based chlorine production for treating water at the community level;
Promote cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural student collaborations in designing energy and water solutions;
Empower students in the three communities to educate peers on energy and water solutions, and the similarities and differences in challenges each community faces, in order to effectively promote climate justice.
Summer 2021 Update: John Kerry, Special Climate Envoy, gives R2i2 and CEM Sare Bilaly students a shoutout for their collaborative work! Watch his remarks below:
Stage 1: R2i2 students create prototypes of requested solar chargers for light and mobile devices (funded by Sparkleberry Teacher Grant).
Stage 2: R2i2 students create instructional videos for solar chargers.
After optimizing the solar chargers, R2i2 students created videos to share with other students to model how to build various solar devices. The videos can be found on this project's subpage, Solar Videos.
Stage 3: Senegalese students create solar chargers
We are honored to have received a Global Teacher Grant from IREX, which will fund solar charger kits and tools for three communities in Senegal. This will allow our students to collect and share data from the solar chargers, and build a better global collaboration on the use of solar power for mobile devices.
STEM students at Alpha Molo Balde in Kolda were able to assemble and test their chargers in October - we look forward to sharing data and ideas in the future!