{"id":1204,"date":"2010-10-15T15:26:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T19:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=1204"},"modified":"2017-07-31T15:30:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T19:30:55","slug":"lighting-way-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2010\/10\/lighting-way-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Lighting the Way Out of Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lighting_the_way\"<\/a>After last January\u2019s massive earthquake in Haiti wrought its destruction on Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, much of the impoverished nation was plunged into darkness.<\/p>\n

In the weeks following the disaster, with the electricity grid broken down and streetlights uprooted, search-and-rescue teams often worked by flashlight alone. Today, field hospitals continue to need reliable light, and an estimated 1.6 million displaced Haitians are living in dark and increasingly dangerous makeshift camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of violence in the camps and organized crime for relief supplies,\u201d says Peter McPhee, MS \u201907<\/strong> (mechanical engineering).Through his role as volunteer energy systems engineer for the nonprofit Earthspark International<\/a>, McPhee is committed to improving that situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is putting free flashlights into the hands of women and families for security purposes,\u201d he explains of Earthspark\u2019s efforts. The group is working in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative<\/a>, the Haitian Ministry of Women\u2019s Affairs, Partners In Health<\/a>, and other community and relief organizations.<\/p>\n

True to Earthspark\u2019s renewable energy roots, the flashlight has a reliable, high-efficiency LED bulb and rechargeable solar panel in the handle, making batteries unnecessary. To date, Earthspark and partners have distributed 6,500 lamps\u2014and they aim to have 20,000 distributed by January 2011. \u201cWe are helping to change things,\u201d says McPhee, who traveled to Haiti in August. \u201cWomen are sharing the lamps as part of a larger community by forming safety patrols and lighting common areas. I\u2019ve always wanted to do relief work and do something good for people in need.\u201d<\/p>\n

McPhee\u2019s involvement with Earthspark in Haiti began in 2008, well before the earthquake, when the fledgling nonprofit\u2014founded to develop and implement renewable energy systems in impoverished countries\u2014began its work there. Their strategy: to collaborate with Haitian communities to develop and make available artificial charcoal, solar lamps, and other renewable products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to seed a social, economic infrastructure using commercially available products that will improve the quality of life, economics, and health,\u201d McPhee says. At the community level, Earthspark works to develop clean energy stores, which provide households and small businesses with clean energy services and products. He notes proudly that the group recently opened one such store in Les Anglais, a Haitian town of over 30,000 people that has no electricity. The stores also act as hubs for educating local citizens on fabricating and using clean energy technologies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that nothing energizes McPhee like renewable energy sources. When he\u2019s not volunteering with Earthspark, he works full time for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, where he serves as project manager. His role there involves researching and evaluating existing technology for reliability, usability, durability, and long-term sustainability. He also serves on the Somerville, Massachusetts Commission on Energy Use and Climate Change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a teenager, I realized that the quality of your environment affects your life,\u201d says McPhee. \u201cHow you use energy\u2014the way we treat our world\u2014has a big impact on poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ALUMNI MAKING NEWS: Peter McPhee, MS ’07 is helping provide impoverished populations, including thousands of displaced Haitians, with renewable energy products that improve safety and quality of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-ideas","issue-fall-2010"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLighting the Way Out of Poverty - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2010\/10\/lighting-way-poverty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lighting the Way Out of Poverty - 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