HEGINS - A biology and environmental science teacher at Tri-Valley High School is making her light shine - shine on impoverished areas of South Africa, that is.
Pamela Ulicny is working diligently to bring "sunshine in a jar" to areas such as Soweto Township, located just outside of Johannesburg, a severely impoverished community established in the apartheid era when blacks were forced to give up their homes and were herded into substandard communities.
Her quest began with an invitation in the mail in April 2011, when she was picked as one of only 24 teachers in the U.S. to go on a funded trip to South Africa through the Toyota International Teacher Program, courtesy fo Toyota Motor Sales and the Institute of International Education.
"I was one of the lucky few, there were over 1,000 other teachers that applied but didn't get the chance to go," Ulicny said. "The letter came as a complete shock to me. I was elated to get a chance to go; for a 'travel junkie' like me, I knew that this would indeed be a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Ulicny said, after the excitement wore down, she realized she wasn't sure what she was heading out to experience or see. She said she knew only the firsthand knowledge she had about South Africa was a scant recollection about apartheid and Nelson Mandela in the news and a loose connection to Paul Simon's Graceland album. She truly thought she would develop a presentation solely about the last three days of the trip's 17-day itinerary; the safari drives through Kruger National Park, but what she experienced and saw in the two weeks before visiting Kruger transformed her.
"In the first few days of the trip I was a naturalist, thinking okay, this is nice, but could we just move on to Kruger, but by the end of the trip, I was a humanitarian," Ulicny said.
Ulicny can't pinpoint the exact moment when her paradigm shifted. She said it could have started after internalizing the political atrocities of South Africa's past in the Apartheid Museum, in the Hector Pieterson Museum, or from visiting Nelson Mandela's cell at Robben Island. But more likely, she said the moment that hit her the hardest was when she saw Soweto Township for the first time.
As she recalled, at first sight, it appears as an endless jumble of shacks made up of corrugated metal, concrete and just about any material that could be salvaged. It's an enormous sprawl of shantytowns or squatters, stretching as far as the eye can see, with a staggering estimate of three million residents.
"The condition in which most people are living in even today are absolutely implorable," Ulicny said. "I saw women washing clothes without running water, children playing in trash-laden roads and streams and heard about people using the 'bucket system' to take care of their bathroom needs. All I could think of is how wrong it felt to be sitting on a coach bus, looking down at the township and its folk, taking pictures of them as if they were some type of attraction, and then knowing that I was going to eat my fill in a quality restaurant and sleep in a four star hotel that night."
Ulicny said it was about that point of the trip when her intentions to come home with a presentation about Kruger National Park went completely out the door. A few days later into the trip, they were given the opportunity to walk into the doors of households of families who live under the constant stresses of poverty, inadequate education, crime, drug use and disease like drug-resistant tuberculosis and AIDS. Some of the stories were too heart-wrenching for Ulicny to repeat.
It was during this time on her trip, that Ulicny heard the story of those working for Educo Africa, a nonprofit organization that works with at-risk youth from impoverished South African townships. Educo Africa helps to empower and transform disadvantaged South African communities by focusing on vulnerable youth, their parents/guardians, and their social environment. It provides social services, family counseling/support, educational support, and access to health care. Their philosophy is to provide a "holistic circle of care" within all of the departments. Case by case, Educo Africa staff works diligently and selflessly to improve the dignity and power of those less fortunate.
When Ulicny returned from her south Africa trip, her presentations encompassed Educo Africa's mission and a need to provide aid for South Africans in poverty. Ulicny raised funds to help five men go through a rehabilitative program, sent out clothing donations and collected money to purchase school uniforms for children. The Tri-Valley community even connected to Educo Africa representatives through a live Skype conference.
Sunshine in a jar
At home, Ulicny kept in regular contact with Mark Gamble, CEO of Educo Africa. In the fall of 2012, Mark came up with the idea of fusing science education with the needs of his people; finding a low-cost way to provide solar-powered lanterns for those in poverty who have no access to electricity. The unit would directly tie into Ulicny's alternative energy unit in environmental science class, it would incorporate more technology engineering, and math into what she teaches, and it has the possibility to carry over into teaching South Africa students to design and build their own solar-powered lanterns, using some simple materials that they can already access such as a glass jar or other clear containers.
"I partnered with Ed Bender of Sundance Solar, who was sympathetic to the cause," Ulicny said. "By November of 2012, he designed a working prototype of a solar powered glass jar. After a few months, we had a circuit board designed and produced in order to create a functional do-it-yourself kit. The product that we developed is a simple way of turning a glass jar into a garden lantern, and is available in market today at www.store.sundancesolar.com/sunbender-do-it-yourself-solar-led-jar-light-kit. A small portion of the proceeds of the sale of these lanterns will be donated to Educo Africa."
The next step
Once the product was in place, the next step was to see how well Ulicny could integrate the project into the classroom.
"With the help of a grant from Citizen Power, I could purchase enough kits for my students, and I could 'pilot' the curriculum in my classroom," Ulicny said. "I developed a 22-page lab manual describing how solar panels work, how rechargeable batteries work, how the LED lanterns work, and how the circuit board works the basic circuitry within. I also wrote a six-page assessment which tracks the students' acquisition of the physics and chemistry of solar power, their ability to calculate how long the lantern will remain lit, and their ability to extrapolate how long it will take to recharge. I also had to teach myself a lot of 'new' tricks, since my expertise is not in the electrical engineering, design, and assembly. I admittedly made a lot of mistakes when I first started soldering and putting the components together, and am still working on improving my troubleshooting and problems solving skills."
Getting the word out
Now that there's a teachable module in place, Ulicny wanted to help get the unit Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - or STEM - approved and help to get the word out so that other teachers nationwide could use it. She presented the idea at the first annual STEMathon in Camp Hill this past August, and also presented it again at the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association this past December. She has also submitted the curriculum and assessment for peer review to Joey Bertrand, who is now planning to incorporate the module into a summer teacher workshop in July 2014 where she will be invited to teach. Additionally, Ed Bender is planning on endorsing the solar jar module at the 2014 National Science Teacher's Association in Boston in April.
"My next step is to contact VWR, a $4 billion company which overseas major science supply companies such as Wards and Sargent Welch," Ulicny said. "This means that there is a possibility that the lantern kits will be listed in science supply catalogs nationwide. This is a real possibility, since one of Ed Bender's kits - the Solar Lab 1.0 kit - is already listed in the Ward's and Sargent Welch catalogs."
Starting seed funding
Ulicny is working to produce and sell the jars fundraiser style locally, where proceeds go toward Educo Africa. She's done two pilot fundraisers already, but only got marginal success.
"I'm finding out that getting less experienced participants to solder and do the wiring is much harder than I originally thought," Ulicny said. "To get around this, Ed Bender has developed a 'simpler to make' model that can be more successful for fundraiser purposes. We hope to breathe life back into the fundraiser portion with a group from Friedens Lutheran Church in Hegins in the next month."
Ulicny is also working on producing a 'beefier,' sturdier, practical prototype for use in South Africa and getting the seed funding so that South Africans can eventually be trained to manufacture solar lanterns themselves.
"We realize that our first prototype is not suitable for the more practical use of lighting up an entire room," Ulicny said. "All our jars do at the moment is produce 'mood lighting,' but we wanted to get the 'science' of it down, and I needed to get the 'teaching' part of it down. We're hoping to keep enough of a momentum on this project so that we can take a serious look at the big hurdles, such as getting the knowledge overseas, making a more durable, foolproof lantern that serves those in need, making it 'theft resistant,' and most of all, making it with 'accessible' materials. We are looking into what types of materials are available domestically, since shipping/importing solar panels, batteries and circuit boards would be too cost prohibitive to support in impoverished communities."