This is the second year of running "Habitat Green in East Africa". It is a service-learning and leadership programme focusing on nurturing students’ global leadership and cultural sensitivity in the context of cross-disciplinary green engineering, appropriate technology, and sustainable living. Students will be trained and then work together with students from the local schools in Rwanda to design and develop green energy solutions for families in remote villages. In the process, you will learn about the concepts of socially responsible leadership, intercultural competencies, racial tolerance and global citizenship, and demonstrate these in practice. At the same time, you also learn about different principles of green engineering, sustainable development, and appropriate technology, and adopt the concepts into the service projects in Rwanda.
(Note: though this project applies concepts from engineering and construction, students are not required to be from FENG or FCE. These SL subjects under Habitat Green have enrolled students from all over the university in previous years and many non-FENG or non-FCE students have done well.)
Learning Goals
- Develop students’ intercultural and global competencies
- Foster students’ leadership, citizenship, and social responsibility
- Raise students’ awareness of the energy poverty and its impact, especially on vulnerable individuals such as children and women
- Raise students’ awareness of sustainable living and environmental stewardship
- Equip students with the skills to design and construct simple solar energy systems
Service Objectives
- Work in groups with the local university students to design solar energy panels for poor families and wire up their homes with basic electrical appliances
- Improve the electricity supply and energy usage for low-income families in Rwanda by constructing or renovating the solar energy system
Service Arrangement
- Due to COVID-19, the services will be tentatively conducted online.
- However, in case the situation is allowed, we will fly to Rwanda to complete the services.
- Starting from semester 2, apart from the lecture and lab, a series of cultural activities will be organized, such as Movie Screen, Meeting Africa people in HK, Cooking Class, Africa music, etc.
Schedule
- 27 – 29 Sep: Indication of Interest
- Oct – Nov: Selection Interview
- Nov: Announcement of selection results
- Semester 2: Classes, Lab and other experiential learning activates
- Semester 3: Services
