Butler students bring light to Haiti
Seven teachers and more than 200 students at Butler Junior High School have worked together in the last month to help people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
They made 225 solar-reflective lanterns that are ready to be installed in homes in impoverished areas without electricity in Haiti.
Industrial materials teacher Robert Wolford first had the idea for “Project Out of the Dark” after he and some students watched a video online outlining how to make the lanterns out of recycled soda bottles and a small amount of sheet metal.
Wolford said he was well aware of the problems facing Haiti because he has a cousin who has gone there to do disaster relief work through Holy Name Roman Catholic Church in Ebensburg, Cambria County.
Haiti, which occupies the western portion of island Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, has not yet recovered from a devastating earthquake in 2010.
“They are not even half way back to where they were. The nation is still in shambles,” Wolford said.
The lanterns, or Moser Lamps, named after inventor Alfredo Moser of Brazil, require only five materials: a 2-liter soda bottle, a piece of sheet metal, water, a small amount of bleach and an adhesive material, such as roofing tar. The materials cost about $1 each.
Once a hole is made in the middle of a square piece of metal, the bottle is placed through it and glued in place. The bottle is then filled with water and a little bleach to prevent algae from growing inside.
The lantern is installed in the roof of a house, and during the day it refracts sunlight creating the brightness of a 40- to 60- watt light bulb.
The students involved in the lamp making are seventh- and eighth-grade students who are in the Enrichment Studies Program, an elective series of classes for students with a high grade point average.
Though Wolford’s class is not part of the Enrichment Studies Program curriculum, he gave up his lunch period so the students could come to his classroom and work on the lanterns.
The students brought in their own soda bottles and used tools in Wolford’s classroom to prepare the metal. To make them easier to transport, the bottles and metal have been packed up separately, so once they arrive in Haiti, someone will have to do some assembly and installation work.
Working with other teachers, the project also touched on math, science, world cultures, writing, video production and public speaking.
Seventh-grade student Harper Jack said that less than 12.5 percent of Haitians have electricity and their per-capita gross domestic product is only $1,300 a year, making it the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
“They don’t have as much as us, they don’t have the utilities and comfort we have,” Harper said.
Harper was one of four students who volunteered to give a presentation to the school board on the project, while other students wrote an article for the school newsletter and others made a short video demonstrating the lamps.
Wolford has collected $810 in donations through the crowdfunding website gofundme.com to ship or transport the lanterns to Haiti.
He said he would like to go with a couple of other teachers to install the lanterns, but they may ship them instead to volunteers with World Help, a Christian humanitarian organization, that would find houses where the lamps could be installed.
The students and other teachers have responded well to the project, opening up the possibility that it could be repeated, Wolford said.
A future project could help needy people in the United States instead of abroad.
“I was thinking we could do something in Appalachia. Some of these kids do not know how lucky they have it here,” he said.
