Community Volunteer Explains the Sustainability of a Solar Powered Rice Mill

In the community of Pejewa in Eastern Sierra Leone, Community Action volunteers trained by OneVillage Partners designed a project to increase agricultural productivity for the hundreds of farmers living in their community. Isata Harding, A Community Action volunteer from the community explains their innovative solution: a rice milling machine powered by solar energy, coupled with a phone charging station. The rice milling machine is used to process rice, a faster, safer and cleaner alternative to the manual processing community members were doing before. The phone charging station produces revenue that is used for repairs and maintenance of the rice milling machine and solar system. It's a self-serving system that promotes self-reliance and ensures the benefits of the community-based project will be experienced for years to come.

Transcript of Isata Harding, Community Action volunteer from Pejewa:

OVP taught us to work together as a community and we are not working for ourselves but the general community.

So whatever we are doing we call the whole community together for a general meeting.

We meet and discuss what we need.

What suits the community is what suits us as volunteers.

Even the store that we have constructed, we are generating proceeds from the rice milling machine and the phones we are charging on the solar lights.

We give accounts to the authorities. They will ask us what we will do with the money.

So we go and keep it for the purpose of repairs and maintenance. At any time the machine gets faulty, it is the proceeds that we will use for repairs and maintenance.

Even this one [the phone charging center], recently got some electrical faults. It was not sending current. It was the saved revenue we used and called someone to fix it up. Do you hear?

If we are not working as a unit with the authorities and community members, we would just operate the machine and keep the proceeds for ourselves.

So there is transparency and accountability.

There would be no room for repair and maintenance of the facility.