Solar Solutions for South Sudan
Mou Riiny, Village Help for South Sudan Project Manager and Electrical Engineer, will present “South Sudan Rural Electrification Project” at IEEE’s 2013 Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) in San Jose, Calif., in October. Mou’s presentation will be an informal overview of his solar electricity project and early results from the field pilot test sites.
The mission of Village Help for South Sudan (VHSS) is to support South Sudanese rural villagers in a variety of ways. VHSS devotes nearly 100 percent of its budgets to enable local village groups to do their own development work. It enables villagers and former refugees like Mou to undertake projects and start businesses to employ South Sudanese to deliver goods and services needed by the local communities.
About Mou
Mou, who came to the U.S. several years ago as a refugee from the long civil war in Sudan, is back in South Sudan where he has started his own solar energy company to deliver electricity to rural villages like Thiou, the one he fled as a child to escape the violence and destruction.
He installed a solar generation system for a village school (construction was supported by VHSS) and is working on other rural electrification projects.
Mou will train solar entrepreneurs who will create small business enterprises that are sustainable in the rural economy. Solar electricity will replace polluting sources of lights that are currently used, and will power small electrical devices such as cell phones.