When their teachers give the go-ahead, children bolt from the open-air classrooms and swarm up the red dirt slope to the merry-go-round. Some stand on the platforms as others run around it, pushing. Gleeful and giggling, they spin in the sunlight. The children are too busy enjoying themselves to think about the power their fun is generating, or the fact that tonight, some of them won't to have to do their homework in the dark.
The village of Essam is off Ghana's electric grid. It is only one village of many in need of power. Most children in Essam do their weekly homework assignments in groups, huddled around kerosene lamps or bobo candles, homemade of sand and wax. Often, one child reads aloud to the others. The light is too dim for everyone to make out the words in their own book.
"Kerosene can get inside your book, and it can make you sick," 15-year-old Ebenezer Anti said.
Junior High students like Anti compete with city kids who have plenty of light to study by, and according to Solomon Tenadu, it is unlikely that the problem will be fixed in the near future.
"Most villages not connected to the electricity grid for 10 to 20 years to come will still be in the dark," Tenadu said.
As country director for Empower Playgrounds Incorporated, Tenadu is part of a new solution brought about by an observant missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Ben Markham was a missionary in the area and saw the problem first-hand. Markham, founder of EPI, came up with the idea to give schools the opportunity to generate their own power through playground equipment.
He enlisted a group of mechanical engineering students from BYU to design a merry-go-round that would generate electricity. And that they did.
The motion of the merry-go-round the students designed as a capstone project in 2007 generates enough electricity to charge between 12 and 24 lanterns, depending on how often children play on it. Although the efficiency of the system is still being tested, EPI technical intern J.J. Campbell is sure the lamps are brighter than the fuel lamps villagers use at home, and EPI provides the lanterns to students free of charge.
The lanterns are distributed to groups of students who take them home in the evenings to study by. Headmaster N.E. Kitson-Dodoo of Essam's Golden Sunbeam Montessori School appointed teachers George Yeboah and Robert Kudiabor to supervise the distribution of the lanterns. Yeboah and Kudiabor selected six children to serve as stewards of the lanterns, or "lantern leaders."
The lantern leaders are responsible for taking the lanterns home, hosting study groups each night, recording when the lanterns are switched on and off, and returning them to the school to be recharged when needed. Currently the school has five groups of six students, with two lanterns per group.
Though the lanterns only give light to 30 of the school's 273 students, Kitson-Dodoo said he has already noticed positive changes. Kids are going through material faster, understanding concepts they previously could not and asking for more, he said.
Getting children to play on the merry-go-round is also much easier than he expected.
"We thought it would have to be something we instruct the kids to do, but they love it," Kitson-Dodoo said. "It's fun all the way."
Not long after its installation, the merry-go-round had to be taken away for repairs. The headmaster remembers the children being sad and quiet.
"They thought it wouldn't be back," he said.
After it was repaired and returned, teachers said the children's jubilation could be heard from down the road.
Essam is the first of five villages to have merry-go-rounds installed as part of EPI's pilot project.
After meeting with Ghana's Ministry of Education, the EPI team visited 18 villages off the electric grid. After assessing the villages, EPI gave applications to 10 and eventually selected five of the applicants. Villages were evaluated based on the strength of the PTA, the relationships of teachers and headmasters, community unity, distances children walked to get to school and the discipline levels of the children.
EPI executive director Sarah Hall said it was important the merry-go-rounds be placed in environments where EPI's objectives were likely to be accomplished.
"We wanted to find out if kids were running amok hurting themselves, or if the teachers were supervising," Hall said. "We want the equipment to be safe as well."
In addition to providing light and recreation to students, which will hopefully increase learning capacity and school attendance, EPI seeks to provide schools with new teaching tools.
Three professors from BYU went to Ghana earlier this year to meet with SACOST, an organization at the University of Winneba that develops science lessons based on activities children see in their communities. Professors Joan Dixon, Steve Shumway and Val Hawkes also met with the Curriculum Resource Development Division of Ghana to start plans for hands-on science lessons that use the merry-go-round to illustrate science concepts such as energy transfers. The professors also brought along a few science demonstrations to show to children in the pilot schools.
Tenadu, who was raised in Ghana, said he went through primary and secondary school without any equipment to demonstrate the basic principles of science.
"Steve's demos were much more meaningful to me than all my time in school," Tenadu said. "If kids can conceptualize science, they can perform better at the secondary level."
EPI hopes to make sure the merry-go-rounds are running smoothly in Ghana before expanding to other countries. Ammon Franklin, a graduate student at BYU, will be spending the next few months evaluating the socio-cultural impacts the lanterns have. He will be investigating the power structures and economic activities in the communities before and after the lanterns are implemented.
"I want to find out how the resources we are bringing to these villages could possibly be diverted and how to minimize those diversions," Franklin said.
He will also be exploring other possible ways lanterns could benefit communities, such as making adult literacy programs possible.
With the help of Kweku Anno, manager of K.A. Anno Engineering located in Ghana's capitol, EPI is also developing an electricity generating zip-line. Future plans include a generating swing.
Anno has been involved with the project from the beginning. He reviewed early merry-go-round designs, making sure plans were tailored to fit the manufacturing facilities he has available.
For the past three months, Anno has worked alongside Campbell, who is a physics major at BYU, to perfect the design. He also worked with a group of BYU interns who came to Ghana for 10 days earlier this year. Anno was impressed by the way the group split up assignments so that everyone had a role to play.
"That type of teamwork was good for my workers to see," Anno said.
He said the interns showed his employees how knowledge of mathematics can make engineering easy.
"We learn from each other," Anno said. "Collaboration is exciting."
For those involved, the project is something worth investing in.
Visiting the village at night was a defining moment for Hall.
"I thought that it was possible that we had a solution, so we were trying to create a problem to solve," she said, "but when we visited, we could see kids straining their eyes. ... We realized it was actually a problem."
Hall said her experience in Ghana has also shown her that all kinds of skill sets are needed to help developing countries.
"We need doctors, lawyers, engineers, biologists and on and on," Hall said.
Campbell said he was sold on the idea the first time he heard about the organization. He was excited about the innovativeness of the concept, and thrilled to find a way to use his knowledge of physics to better the world.
Although there may still be more modifications ahead, Anno aims to have five more merry-go-rounds built and installed by the end of the year.
Anno said they are lucky their biggest problem is getting the kids off it long enough to improve it.
Copyright Brigham Young University 8 Sep 2008
