US teen helping power computers via solar energy

LAFAYETTE, USA -- Siena Faughnan, 14, could kick off her summer vacation this year like any other middle school kid: sleep in late, putter around the house in flip-flops, and spend plenty of downtime at the pool.

Instead, the Platt Middle School student will spend much of June in a hot and humid African village more than 6,700 miles away from her Indian Peaks home in Lafayette.

Siena is making her second trip to Ejisu, Ghana, as part of a group of mostly college students that has been helping establish computer access for 450 students at the K-9 Ejisu Model School.

The first time Siena went, in March 2007 at age 13, she helped set up 100 computers that had been shipped to Ejisu by World Computer Exchange.

"They seemed really excited about getting something new," Siena said.

This time she's going to help teach the students how to use certain software programs and install a solar power system to keep the machines going in a country where electricity is unreliable.

"Some days, they'll be able to use them and then they would go out,” she said.

Siena’s aunt, Marla DeRosa, said electrical power in Ejisu is reliable only about 20 percent of the time.

DeRosa, a professor of English at Boston College, helped launch the Ejisu computer donation program a couple of years ago. She had been going to the village with dozens of her students at BC as part of a series of service trips to Ghana, the aim of which was to develop a computer literacy camp at the school.

“I think the immediate need is going to be keeping these computers running,” she said.

DeRosa said the point of going solar — though it might be a little more expensive than running a diesel generator — is to ensure an environmentally clean solution to the pressing problem of intermittent power.

Her group is trying to raise $50,000 to pay for the costs of acquiring and installing the solar equipment.

DeRosa, who accompanied her niece to Ghana last year and will be with her again next month, said Siena has picked up an appreciation for how others live and has a more worldly perspective than the typical eighth-grader.

“When she got over there and kind of realized the situation these kids are facing — they have so little — she saw how excited the teachers and kids were to get these computers,” DeRosa said.

Siena said she’s looking forward to her second trip to Ghana, despite the “swarms of bugs” and the rigorous series of anti-malarial and other vaccination injections she will have to undergo again.

Not to mention the three men who asked for her hand in marriage.

While Siena doesn’t know exactly what her role might eventually be, she said she can’t wait to see the children at the Ejisu Model School again.

“It feels good to be able to teach something that they can use in the future,” she said.

Cathy Faughnan, Siena’s mother, said her daughter is in good hands and the experience in Ejisu will likely be something she treasures the rest of her life.

“It gives her a perspective of what we have in this country,” Faughnan said. “It’s interesting that she sees how happy they are over there and that wealth doesn’t equate to happiness.”

Faughnan, who lost her husband Chris Faughnan in the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, said that tragedy has played a role in pushing her and her three children toward acts of international healing.

“We’re going to bring something good out of something horrible,” Cathy Faughnan said.

The family is currently granting a scholarship in Chris Faughnan’s name to a student at Arvada High School, where he graduated in 1981.

Candidates are required to explain how they would promote an ideal of acceptance and respect for different cultures on a local, national and global scale in order to prevent an event like the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“It’s a chance to get these kids to think about their role in the world,” Cathy Faughnan said.