You don’t need to be an engineer to build your own solar system

I am really thankful to the trainers. They have been very effective and very patient in teaching us. Apart from the actual wood work and technical stuff, they also taught us the true purpose and meaning of doing these projects. They are very inspiring.

I highly appreciate that the Academy incorporated both lectures and hands-on workshops. I love the enthusiastic and supportive organizing team who inspired me a lot. I became more confident and committed on taking true actions to apply what I learn to real life.

Participating in SEYN’s first Academy was a life-changing experience. The Project that I am founder gained structure and wings there with support of an incredibly experienced team of specialists in energy sector and sustainability, experienced doers and “hands-on” projects, which inspired my way of being and working afterwards.

Being a student from a field of natural resource management it has been diverse field for me to be involved in the technical knowledge related to construction and product design.

I really love the supportive and fun environment that YEA has created in this virtual study program. It was such a shame not being able to meet you guys in real life, but I had had such an amazing week.

The journey in YEA has provided me both knowledge and a better vision about how to operate an efficient study program. […] I will try my best to deliver the model and spirit of YEA to Vietnamese high school students.

Before I used to think in limitations, I’d always think about what I couldn’t do. I thought I was weak in technology. After, I felt I could do anything. I could start using this in civil society work.

The most remarkable moments were building things by ourselves, using really simple tools. I’m an engineer but I had no such practical experience.

[…] Now we are no longer heavily reliant on our male tech leads when it comes to the “techy stuff”, us ladies now walk side by side with them since now we also know how renewable energy works and how we can build our own power systems ourselves. And these newfound capabilities smoothly synergise with our tech leads and we ended up accomplishing much more than we were used to and really maximized our impact to our partner community.

I started to include RE in our agricultural projects and submitted proposals for solar systems in some farms. Two small farms installed solar water pumps themselves.

[…] It’s the reinforcement of people’s capabilities to be changemakers and during such a short period of time, you see it happening and then you think will it last? But then you have a check-in call a few months later and you see that they are still carrying on and are growing. So that’s quite a privilege to see that happening and I think that’s something that should be scaled.

The community we built during the entire stay, we still communicate up to this day (…) really miss being there and learning for the brilliant people we met and gaining insights from them.

We’ve met a lot of people with the same mindset wanting to help the communities that we serve and that’s different than all the experiences that we had, as it was on an international level and even after the event we are still connected in a way, we talk with our peers and we still consult with one another and we cheer each other and that’s something that’s very important for me.

[…] It felt like a community, it is a rare opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and cultures and communicating effectively.