By Travis Thompson
Students at Knar Primary School are seeing things in a whole new light after practicing their art skills in a contest that ended with PLF awarding dozens of cutting-edge, hand-held solar lamps.
PLF staff and Knar School Librarian Kong Kaoun asked the primary school students–all of whom live in areas with little to no electricity–to draw or paint pictures that showed what they would do if they were awarded a lightweight, waterproof LuminAID solar lamp. Some students drew pictures of children reading books in their homes at night under the light, families tending to the farm animals in the dark with the help of the lamp, and children riding bicycles at night to get to evening classes with the aid of the light.
Knar Students look at their peers’ artwork and the solar lights.
The light inflates like a balloon and stores power from the sun on a small solar panel on the side of the balloon. It only takes an hour or so of being in the sun to store power for use the whole night. The settings allow for two levels of brightness.
The 40 winners were in Grades Kindergarten through 6.
After PLF staff looked through all the student creations, they awarded 40 winners, with each winner getting a solar lamp to take home. The lamps were handed out in a celebration at Knar School in which the student artwork was displayed with balloons and gold medals. PLF Founder Ponheary Ly and President Lori Carlson demonstrated to the students how to use the lamps, a tool that can make a huge impact in this area. LuminAID donated all the lamps to the project.
Click the lamp picture below to watch a video of how the LuminAID light works.
Knar students show off their new solar lamps.
This makes me so happy too see the children using their artistic skills!!