David Goodwin was the first to answer the last contest:  David Dornbos and his team are living in a small village checking out the farmers that are experiminting with a one-stem rice system called SRI (System Rice Intensification).  Basically the farmer would transplant a single stem (instead 4 or 5 stems) and also plant them further apart.   So you plant less rice further apart and get more yield.

Here is another question for everyone:

 In the picture below, what is the thing that Arjen is holding?  And why might this style of that thing be better than other more common styles? 

We had another sick student today, but she is feeling much better now.   Please continue to pray for our health and safety.

Regards,

Leonard De Rooy 

Today our group went to Kamworks a young solar energy company located about 40 km outside of PP.  This morning it took us about 1.5 hours to travel the 40km due to traffic. 

Arjen Luxwolda is one of the owners and he gave us a tour of their facilities.   The whole complex is run off of solar panels with battery storage.   Arjen did indicate that they did have a generator for backup but that they did not use it very much (they still needed it to run the welder).

The company is located on an orphanage.  They support the orphanage and hope to employ “graduates” from the orphanage.  They mentioned that a high percentage of employment in Cambodia is family based – you go work for the family business.  So therefore an orphan has a hard time finding a job.

Here we are walking around one of the solar panels.  They have a manual tilt control to track the sun but find that at this location it is not needed.

In the workshop, Arjen is showing some of the prototype thermo-form molds made out of plaster.  The machine on the right is a used thermo-form machine that he hopes to use to manufacture the lights.  If anyone knows of other machines that they would like to donate then let us know! 

 They just recieved the new molds from Viet-Nam yesterday and were excited to try them out.

A "graduate" from the orphanage working on a board. 

Today we went to KamWorks, which is a company that partners with an NGO, the NGO started an orphanage and the company sets up solar panels in homes and schools and orphanages, but it is a company. It was really cool because they involve the entire design process using student interns, that usually come from a university in the netherlands. they also employ and train the orphanage kids to build the products so that they have skills. It was good to see that all the stuff we learn in class has application. 

We also went to the russian market and I got some neat souveniers. And guess what I got to see my friend Julie, that I went to high school with. She lives here, so she came and met us at the market. she seemed really happy and excited about her work, she gets to travel a lot.

Well, thats about it for the day. We are started to get hungry for burgers and fries. we mostly have rice and curry. or noodles. which is good, but theres not too much variety.

 -Elizabeth Smit