Teaching solar energy: four student workshops

The workshops

A Flash Forward workshop table looks like a small assembly line: a 5V solar panel, a rechargeable battery, a TP4056 charge board, two 5 mm LEDs, a slide switch and a 3D-printed case. Those are the same parts that go into every study light the team ships, and students at the workshops get to handle all of them.

About 100 students have taken part across 4 hands-on STEM workshops. Student interns walk through the whole chain: how the panel turns sunlight into current, how the charge board feeds that current into the battery, how the LEDs turn it back into light, and how a $5.17 assembly becomes a light that recharges in about 7 hours of sun and runs up to about 12 hours on a full charge.

The light on the table is not a demo unit or a toy. It is the same $5.17 design that has already gone to students through partners in Haiti, India and the DR Congo, so what students hold in the workshop is the real thing.

The workshops are the other half of "for students, by students." The lights go to students who need them to study after dark, placed by partner organizations that know the communities. The workshops go to students who want to see how sunlight becomes study time, taught by the same interns who build the lights. A student who leaves a workshop can explain what a charge board does, and that understanding is the point.

Bring a workshop to your school

Schools and student groups can ask the team about running a workshop. Write through the contact form or email about@flashforwardfoundation.org.