Tough Light Partnered With
Empower Playgrounds Inc.

Watch "What a lantern can do"

Empower Playgrounds Inc. Builds Merry-Go-Rounds That Generate Electricity

Since 2007, Empower Playgrounds, Inc has installed 40 merry-go-rounds at schools all over Ghana, West Africa. Our merry-go-rounds generate renewable energy that charges lanterns which children can use in their classrooms and homes to study at night.

Children in rural Ghana support their families by working on farms or chores after school until the sun goes down. Most of these children do not have access to electricity at home or in their villages. Ghana has a rigorous high school entrance exam with only 50% of applicants being accepted. Without light to study in the evenings, less than 10% of children in rural Ghana will enter high school. Empower Playgrounds helps level the playing field for these children through sustainable innovation.

WHAT WE'VE ACHIEVED (EPI)

  • 55 Merry-Go-Rounds (MGR) that Generate electricity at 50 schools in Ghana, 1 in Burkina Faso and 2 in Mali

  • EPI MGRs serve 17,000 children

  • 5 million hours of light generated and used from the MGR

  • 55 Village Solar Project homes serving a communities on 3 islands on the Volta lake

  • We have delivered 1000 Science Kits to 50 schools since 2008

  • 4 Boreholes serving 4 communities with a total of 2000 people

  • 4 BioFil units serving 4 communities with a total of 1,300 people

  • 4 School Building Construction projects to support the increased enrollment from the merry-go-round

  • 6 School libraries installed

  • 3 Girls scholarship student recipients

If you would like to help, 100% of your donations go directly to the children in Ghana

Pause for a moment to imagine your life without electricity. Imagine it without computers or phones, without a washer or dryer, without a heater, or an air conditioner, or a refrigerator. Imagine it, most specifically, without light. Living without such luxuries can compound our daily tasks, so we can easily imagine the added weight it places on people living in agricultural communities. These are the circumstances under which EPI works. Though not entirely to blame, this lack of electricity relates closely to the underachievement of education in developing countries. Without light at home or in their schools, children of rural communities find it difficult to study, read and do their homework at night. Because they assist on farms and at other chores until past sundown, there is often no natural light left for these children to see by when it comes time to study. Tough Light partnered with Empower Playgrounds INC is bringing the light into the darkness and changing lives one lantern at a time!

Any donation of $10 or more is welcomed. Every $41.25 collected through donations, purchases a lantern and ships it to Ghana for a study group of 4-5 students seen as pictured above. For every lantern that is purchased by a donation, Tough Light makes a contribution of $24.69

Thank you for your consideration!

Learn More about EPI