A group of six IIT Students, Kamil Bober (Chem), Simon Brauer (Psych), Annie Hutches (Arch), Savannah Prout (Business), Dhara Shah (BME), and Alex Stiles (ME) visited Lascahobas, Haiti on December 10 to implement the culmination of their work for IPRO 335: IIT Empowering Haiti. The team was led by Associate Professor of Political Science Laura Hosman, founder and CEO of Green Wifi Bruce Baikie, ICTD UC-Boulder graduate student Kevin McElhinney, and UIC nursing student Adriana Matos.

The team installed a solar solution in the EFACAP school to charge 400 XO laptops in August 2011 and returned this December to bring WiFi connectivity, install a server to remotely monitor the progress of the solar solution, install a separate server for the teachers to create and share lesson plans, and build and install XO charging stations to dock the laptops in a safer, more secure manner to ensure the longevity of the laptops.

In addition to all of the installations, the team held meetings with teachers at the school to discuss their usage and familiarity of technology in the classroom and talk about next steps of the project. The team trained the teachers on how to use the internet and server—the teachers were quite amazed with the internet and expressed eagerness to use the tools in the classroom. The school had also arranged for the team to meet with parents of the school’s students to discuss their opinions of the project.

Following the installations and meetings, the team visited three other primary schools and met with the directors to interview and collect data to select the next school to install the solar solution in. The IPRO team will continue in spring 2012 to create a business model and prepare for another solar implementation.