Five schools have benefited from new lighting and lighting fixtures as part of the ongoing St. Lucia Electricity Services Limited (LUCELEC) Electrification Project.
The projects ranged from the installation of new LED bulbs to improve the lighting at the institutions to the upgrade and modification of electrical circuitry to facilitate the installation of an aquaponics pond.
The benefiting schools are the Entrepot Secondary School, Patricia D. James Secondary School, Leon Hess Comprehensive Secondary School, Creative Kids Kindergarten Development Centre and the Dame Pearlette Louisy Primary School.
At the very core of this philanthropic activity is employee volunteerism. Team members from LUCELEC, led by Meter Technician Kaleb Sebastien, lent their expertise, working mainly on Sundays to bring new life into the classrooms and school grounds.
“Teaching and learning [were] positively impacted because right now teachers can go to classrooms and there’s light and we also had some lighting [installed] in other rooms, in the specialized rooms where it was not functioning or not working for over 5 years. LUCELEC coming through was a blessing for our school,” says Timothy Dupre, the Principal of the Patricia D. James Secondary School in Vide Bouteille.
The team worked safely and efficiently to accomplish the common goal. At one of the schools, the volunteers numbered as high as 27 and at the others – volunteers numbering 26, 21, 15 and 3 respectively, worked for a combined 21 volunteer hours.
“We came on board, and we changed the fluorescent bulbs into LED tubes. Now this is very important even in terms of energy saving moving forward, they give a better lighting [experience], they are easier to dispose of and as we could see and hear the children are very pleased with this transition. In certain schools we couldn’t change the bulb itself, so we changed the entire fixtures,” says LUCELEC Volunteer Team Leader Kaleb Sebastien.
For the students from the Entrepot Secondary School who are currently studying Electricity, the work at that school morphed into a school project where they studied and learnt from the LUCELEC crews.
“Because our school is one of the schools that offer Electricity as a subject, we explored the possibility of partnering with them in terms of allowing our students to understudy the team responsible for putting up these lights. Our students did that as part of their project, to work alongside and observe them as if they were installing the new lighting system using LED’s, says Entrepot Secondary School Principal Arthur Scott.
Curgan Cherubin is one of these students. He says it was an experience that taught him the practical skill of changing a lightbulb – one he wanted to learn so he can help his mom do so at home. He is also very pleased with the complete work.
“They were friendly, they showed us where we went wrong, what we needed to learn. The lights work great, they’re beautiful, shining brighter than before because the classes before only had 2 lights, some had 1, none,” he says.
The Principal of the Leon Hess Secondary School was equally pleased with the impact of the new lighting on the school and its students.
“The teachers, they’re happy because they’re saying, “now I feel relieved, I feel as if I’m in a well-lit classroom, I can see what I’m doing, I can see the child at the back, I can see the child on the side” so it’s really, really, I can’t even thank LUCELEC enough,” says Leon Hess Secondary School Principal, Florence Gustave-Denis.
Work on this phase of the LUCELEC funded electrification project began in April and ended in July. The LUCELEC volunteers came from the Company’s Technical Division.
SOURCE: St. Lucia Electricity Services Limited
