University High students plan to bring light to orphanage in Kenya

A group of students at University High School are giving the gift of light to children at an orphanage in Kenya, Africa.

The Tucson teens are working with the organization We Share Solar to build a solar suitcase capable of powering three or four lights at night.

The students were awarded a $2,000 grant to cover the cost of the equipment and a few will travel across the globe to personally deliver the device this summer.

The effort was initiated by two brothers — Jonathan and Will Hewings — who formed a school club at the beginning of the spring semester after learning about the opportunity.

Their Humanitarian Technology Club is designed to explore ways technology can benefit people.

Five of the siblings’ classmates — Zachary Eckert, Emily Muirhead, Hassan Qureshi, Alex Blythe and Ian Schwind — jumped on board and the group came together on Saturday to assemble and wire the suitcase, which they tested by powering up their cell phones.

At the orphanage, where children live and learn, there is no electricity. The suitcase will likely be used to power three or four lights within a room for four to five hours when night falls, said Alan Jensen, a We Share Solar lead instructor who led the workshop at UHS, 421 N. Arcadia Ave.

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We Share Solar is the educational outreach component of We Care Solar, an organization that creates solar suitcases for use in maternity clinics around the world.

For 16-year-old Will, who has helped assemble prosthetic hands for people in need and is interested in engineering, the humanitarian We Share Solar effort was appealing.

“After seeing pictures of people suffering without electricity in Africa I thought it was necessary and our duty to help them,” added 14-year-old Jonathan, who is interested in biology or engineering as a career.

To make it happen, the teens used their spring break to pitch the idea to the Rincon Rotary Club, which supported the effort with a $2,000 grant.

While the We Share Solar program is built on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — concepts, it is bigger than that, Jensen said.

“The most powerful thing is the humanitarian component where kids get to give something of themselves to people less fortunate in the world,” he said. “We take so much for granted here.”