Lighting Up Ujirev

Today was the final day of our adventure outside of Bangalore and the last visit with SELCO. We learned about several innovative projects to improve farming.

We began the day at SELCO's base in a local university where college students are working with local grade students to find innovative solutions for daily problems in rural India.

We saw a motion activated sound machine to scare away produce-destroying monkeys, a dryer that pulls the air out from a tarp to allow the foods and plants underneath to dry faster, and presentations on water condensation harvesting and a solar powered vendor cart. From there we visited a SELCO maker's space at a local grade school. This space is used to encourage problem solving and innovation for the school children as well as for other members of the community and is open outside of regular school hours. Our task once we arrived was to help the kids build solar panels based on the instructions they had received in the local language of Kanada, which they had to communicate to us. It was definitely the highlight of my visit outside of Bangalore and was unlike any project I'd done when I was their age (10-12). We ended our rural visit with a trip to a nearby river that holds significance in southern India and Hinduism.