Building pressures 

Dire living conditions in marginalized rural and border communities, including in and around refugee or Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps create especially vulnerable populations that suffer from higher instances of communal violence often over limited access to resources. The same factors are attributed to the emergence of violent extremism, especially among young people between the ages of 18 and 24 years of age who represent over 50% of the demographic profile in this region. 

No way up

Despite discontent with living conditions, many youth feel that they are unable to find a viable solution to their predicament. Despite a boom in the number of youth accessing secondary and higher education, the broadly shared sentiment, especially in French-speaking nations, is that schools do little to prepare youth to enter a highly competitive and unyielding marketplace. Faced with fewer options, the mounting frustrations have  lead to risk taking behavior including violence, banditry, migration to neighboring countries or braving the trek across the sahara and the Mediterranean sea for opportunities abroad.

Solution-based programming

Africa is one of the world's top dumping grounds for outdated or unwanted electronics. As a result, it also has a large supply of affordable electronic components. What an oportune time to educate and train young people and artisans on ways to translate the widespread availability of electronic components to opportunities for village-level entrepreneurship in the production of low-cost, small-scale renewable energy.    

This innovation addresses the lack of access to power in rural villages by training local youth in windy coastal and Sahel areas to build small 40 to 120 watt wind turbines using 100% locally sourced recycled materials . 

The goal is to empower energy entrepreneurs capable of innovating their own designs to meet local demand.