Ejemekwuru Rural Electricity Restoration Project

Campaign to restore electricity to a farming & small-business community

Support the Ejemekwuru Community Rural Electricity Restoration Project, and help restore access to electricity to a once boisterous community now living in a decade-long period of obscurity due to lack of electricity.

The Ejemekwuru Story

Ejemekwuru is a primarily rural community in the southeastern region of Nigeria. With a population of about 15,000 across the five (5) major villages that make up the community, the indigenous people are predominantly small-scale farmers, with the rest into artisan and vocational jobs in commerce and trading. Once a jolly, happy and boisterous community, more than 75% of the population has lived in total darkness, without electricity access for the past decade. The other 25% have been without access to electricity for more than three years and counting.

Although connected to the national electricity grid, the community-funded electricity step-down transformers have all packed up, throwing all five villages into decade-long darkness. Regrettably, this majorly small-scale farming community is unable to afford the purchase and installation costs of new transformers after expending the community’s financial resources

attempting to repair the damaged transformers.

And the community continues to groan. Small businesses such as welders, food sellers, hair salons, tailors, etc., rely on expensive private sources of electricity - mainly diesel generators- and significantly run up their business costs. Other businesses are shutting down (or relocating) in quick successions, such as a cold room that was established to provide frozen food storage/distribution but has now packed up. The primary healthcare centers have struggled to operate effectively without access to electricity – they complain about the lack of power to pump water from the water wells to supply the clinics and patients and the

inability to operate essential life-saving equipment. Using candles and/or lanterns to deliver women going into labor at night is now a common phenomenon.

Overall, businesses are barely surviving and economic activities have all but disappeared. The community shuts down soon after dark; school-aged kids cannot study beyond 6 pm, and the people are disconnected from the information/digital world as they have to pay a fee to private generator owners to charge their mobile phones. In addition, the security situation has worsened considerably as mischief-makers frequently take advantage of the darkness to unleash havoc on the community.

All these factors combined have further impoverished the people and dramatically reduced the quality of life in Ejemekwuru.

A small group of indigenes of Ejemekwuru has come together to form the Ejemekwuru Progressives Forum to raise awareness and the necessary funds to tackle some of the critical developmental challenges facing the community, starting with the restoration of access to electricity.

Ejemekwuru needs five (5) units of 500KVA/33V/415V Electric step-down transformers. Each transformer will be dedicated to one of the five approx. 3,000-person villages that make up the Ejemekwuru community.

The estimated Purchase and Installation costs are ~$13,000 per transformer, for a total of $65,000 for all five transformers. 100% of the funds raised from this GoFundMe campaign will be channeled towards purchasing and installing these brand-new transformers in Ejemekwuru.

No amount is too small! Your donations will go a long way to helping improve the quality of life of the people of Ejemekwuru.

Please, help us restore access to electricity to this once jolly, happy community and mitigate further impoverishment.

Many thanks!