Up, Up, Up and Away: Our Journey Connecting Schools To The World Resumes

Loss. Fear. Anxiety. Loneliness. These have become some of the most dominant emotions during the last year as the world suffered from the pandemic. Gradually, steadily, the world began to re-open. That meant for us, we could go back into schools and go back to doing what we love, inspiring hope, growth, progress, connection; here is our story.

A lot of 2020 for the Connected Communities Schools programme at Regain37 was constant preparation for the role we could play in powering schools and providing Local Access Network (LAN) Servers that can provide digital content to aid students and teachers in providing more quality education for children.

When the government gave the greenlight for children to return to schools, we also began to knock on the doors of the schools we had been working with. From Charles Clark Primary school in Hurungwe to St Alberts High School in Centenary, the team has travelled more than 2 500km connecting 18 schools since in 2021, making it a total of 28 (as of June 2021).  28 schools connected to solar translates to 140Kva of solar power connected.

In some schools, the solar is the primary source of power. In others, it is back up system replacing fossil fuel powered generators meaning the schools in the long term are making significant savings as well as having a reliable, constant supply of power. Power as the backbone of schools provides students the opportunity to do some much needed catch up work on their respective curriculums.

At our most recent visit at Highfield High school, the school children interacted with the RACHEL server as well as presentations on the hardware repair side of the work Regain37 does fixing laptops, desktops and computers. Besides inspiring some young girls to take up software engineering, lots of them were keen to realise they could fix their old phones and laptops at home and use them for their schooling instead of throwing them away.

As the world continues to build long term solutions to the pandemic, Regain37 is working on supporting schools to achieve quality pass rates, wholesome learning for their children. Do you have a school you think would benefit from a solar system? Get in touch with us.