Dispatches
Shyorongi, Rwanda: Environmental education off the grid
April 18, 2008
The following day, Francoise took us up into the mountains north of Kigali, to Stella Matutina Secondary School in the community of Shyorongi.
Walking the school property, practicality blended with beauty… rows of bright green cabbages, carefully crafted gravel pathways, prolific groves of banana trees, healthy cows… and students who were benefiting from exposure to simple, common sense technologies that would be considered edgy in the western world.
There’s no education like outright exposure so keep an eye peeled for those Stella Matutina graduates - they’ve got smarts to share. Read on…
As a school utterly off the grid, GEF/ UNDP became involved with the school to help them make steps toward self-sufficiency, teaching educators and students integrated resource management and created an “education in action” school for environmental education that taught conservation, organic farming and sustainable sanitation.
An all-girls school with 430 students, the school received a generous donation and assistance from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) who helped the design and build a biogas system that would provide an alternative to charcoal and firewood to fuel the school’s kitchen.
Biogas, for the uninitiated, is the methane created by human and animal waste, harvested for fuel. Yep, just that sexy… septic tanks gone wild. But truly, it’s quite wonderful what poo can do for you. I’ll give it an official “ick” on introducing the concept, but it’s really simple, sanitary and smart.
Underground receptacles store waste from the school latrines as well as manure from the school’s resident livestock. Methane rises off the tanks, which flow into gas lines that lead into the school’s kitchen, fueling the commercial cooking burners. While not eliminating the use of firewood, biogas now does the lion’s share of fuel for cooking most of the school’s meals.
Back when the school’s kitchens were reliant on firewood, it took 100 cubic meters of wood to run the kitchen for 9 months. In 2006, after the inception of the biogas program, the school bought another 100 cubic meters of firewood. By March of 2008, they still had half of their original purchase, 50 cubic meters of firewood, left. So, less firewood usage is a good thing!
But biogas is just part of the environmental education at Stella Matutina Secondary School. Like the Gorilla Organization sponsored water cistern projects in Ruhengeri, the school leverages almost daily rainfall and broad classroom roofs to feed massive water cisterns for the school’s drinking and cooking water supply. Students are involved in the acres of gardens on school grounds and all vegetables (yes, ALL vegetables) served in meals for over 400 students are grown in school organic gardens - no mean feat!
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