People + Solar: A powerful partnership

April 22, 2025

This year, Earth Day’s call to action is an invitation for everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy. At Change for Children, our projects are fueled primarily by people power, but we can’t discount that solar power has opened up some pretty impactful opportunities!

While those big ol’ photovoltaic panels aren’t the easiest to transport by motorized canoe, people-power has made it possible. People power has hauled them up river banks to reach remote communities in Bosawas, Nicaragua. People power has hoisted them onto school rooftops. And people power stands in front of students to teach lessons leveraging off-grid technology.

People, together with solar power, lights up opportunity.

In off-grid El Amay and San Pedro Beleju in Chicaman, Guatemala, we are currently working  on the construction of latrines, hand-washing stations, and rain-water collection and purifying systems to ensure safe water and sanitation for students. It is here that we have most recently installed technology classrooms. Solar power brings laptops to life and gives teachers the resources to enhance their teaching and students the opportunity to gain skills and exposure often unavailable to remote rural students in Guatemala’s highlands.

Regions with the fewest resources are often also those with the highest vulnerability to climate change. A climate change course was recently developed in partnership with 60 million girls and Mundo Posible to address the negative impacts of climate change through education by equipping teachers with the skills required to integrate Climate Change Education into their classes. Uploaded to offline servers, for many teachers, the course is available through the technology made possible by solar energy. The course includes a complete curriculum, lesson plans, locally-developed video content, and a 12-hour certificate program for teachers working in remote Indigenous communities. While in North America, climate change lessons may emphasize turning off lights and buying electric cars, the intent of the digital climate change course is to provide content contextually relevant to local realities in remote Indigenous communities in Central America and includes both Indigenous and Western scientific approaches.

In northwest Nicaragua, solar panels provide the energy required to pump water from many a well to community water tanks placed high up on hills to provide sufficient pressure to gravity-feed water to the homes of families where grid power is unavailable or unreliable. Most recently, solar power was added to the water system in San Ramon in El Sauce in the dry corridor of Nicaragua.

While people-power has always been at the heart of our work, today both people power and solar power infiltrate almost all our projects. We are happy to unite behind renewable energy and celebrate its flexibility to bring opportunity where roads are scarce, where power grids have simply yet to reach, and where people are poised to embrace opportunity nonetheless.

Bring on the sunshine, we say.      

Climate Change Earth Day Education In The Field Indigenous Peoples Water