Green Blogging

This post is published on Christmas day, and I have a heartening story for you. It comes from the desperately poor country of Malawi. William Kamkwamba was just an ordinary boy from a poor farming family. He loved science but when drought and famine struck his country his family could no longer afford to pay his school fees and he was forced to leave school.

However William did not give up on his dreams of science. He went to his local library studying the books there. One book in particular inspired him. It showed how a windmill could generate electricity and pump water for irrigation – two things his village desperately needed. If only he could build a windmill!

Undeterred by the twin difficulties of poor English and no money for materials, William managed to work out how to build one from studying the pictures and diagrams in the book, and found the materials from a local scrap yard.

Friends and family thought he was mad when he started building his crazy construction, but they soon changed their mind when they found that it could charge up their mobile phones. William became a bit of a celebrity in his country. He was then discovered by TED Global Conference Director Emeka Okafor, who invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship.

William spoke at the 2007 TED conference, and his story so moved people there that they got together to help him improve his community projects, and provide a scholarship for his education. At present he is now attending school in South Africa. He spoke at the 2009 TED conference also where he is clearly overwhelmed by the standing ovation he received. Here is his entry on the TED web-site. He is an inspiration to us all,

If you want to learn more, a book has now been published which you can see in the box below.

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site