WakaWakas for Zambia

-“Linda” is a rur­al com­munity in the Lu­saka province of Zam­bia. The Linda com­munity has a pop­u­la­tion of 35,000, of which the ma­jor­ity isn’t form­ally em­ployed. Ad­di­tion­ally, the com­munity is be­hind on the de­vel­op­ment of ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture, such as roads and ac­cess­ible en­ergy sources. With the re-emer­gence of load –shed­ding in Zam­bia, there is a lack of con­tinu­ous and re­li­able en­ergy. Sad to say is that the Linda com­munity is also be­hind in oth­er areas of de­vel­op­ment such as edu­ca­tion, health­care and hous­ing.
The suc­cess­ful col­lab­or­a­tion between the Dutch and Zam­bi­an De­part­ments of Hab­it­at for Hu­man­ity and WakaWaka however has lit up the Linda Com­munity in Lu­saka province! A first dis­tri­bu­tion of 504 WakaWaka Powers+ in April 2016 was met with so much en­thu­si­asm by both Hab­it­at for Hu­man­ity Zam­bia and the Linda com­munity that forces were com­bined again to make a second dis­tri­bu­tion round pos­sible, which took place in May and Ju­ly of this year. What makes this dona­tion stand out is that be­sides donat­ing 250 WakaWaka Powers, the dona­tion also in­cluded 100 WakaWaka Base10 and 135 Pock­et Lights, a pi­lot provid­ing both Hab­it­at for Hu­man­ity and WakaWaka it­self with key in­form­a­tion on the re­sponse to these means of shar­ing light and power.
The WakaWa­kas were suc­cess­fully dis­trib­uted to a wide ar­ray of be­ne­fi­ciar­ies with­in the com­munity and was re­ceived with a lot of en­thu­si­asm and an­ti­cip­a­tion, as was made clear by the large, en­er­get­ic turn-up dur­ing dis­tri­bu­tions and demon­stra­tions. Com­munity mem­bers were clearly very keen on ob­tain­ing a WakaWaka and join­ing the group of be­ne­fi­ciar­ies us­ing al­tern­at­ive en­ergy and light­ing solu­tions.