Conceptualised on January 11, 2010, Project Chirag - a youth movement aiming to eradicate dark villages (villages without electricity) completly have come a long way in their quest.
The stricking part is how these students converted an idea into a reality. Within three months of formation they lighted over 82 homes out of a total of 111, all in the Maharashtrian district of Thane. Also in less than 100 days, these group containing 250 student Members of SIFE-HRC, managed to get the faith of the villagers.
Later they raised the money, selected a vendor who were wiling to give them the technology to produce quality solar lamps in a subsidized price, also trained a disadvantaged section of the villagers to assemble these solar lamps, trained their own volunteers to impart training to the assemblers, transported and installed solar lamps in this village and sold these lamps that costs them Rs 3,650 a piece for just Rs 500 to make Project Chirag a reality.
Project Chirag works in two phases:
Phase 1 of this project is to light up these "dark " villages with no access to any power with Solar Energy
Phase 2 of this project, economic upliftment activities would be carried out along with establishing public kitchens, improving educational infrastructure and aids, adult literacy programmes as well as other skillset enhancement training.
The first phase of this project enabled them to gain confidence in the minds of the villagers which will then make it easy to carry out phase 2 in a smooth manner.
Now Project Chirag is such a huge movement that, it's volunteers are operating in 4 States mainly in Central India.
Brought Economic upliftment to the Villagers
Project Chirag trained paraplegics to make these solar lamps and help earn a livelihood out of it. Earlier they would earn just Rs 1,200($21) per month, but assembling lamps brought about their economic upliftment.
Today each such person earns Rs 30 on every lamps/he assembles. And with each person assembling 7 to 10 lamps a day, they earn far more than what they earned previously.
For more details visit: Project Chirag
