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SunPower Foundation brings smile (and shoes) to students in Sultan Kudarat province
SULTAN KUDARAT – Travelling halfway across the globe from the west coast of the United States to Central Mindanao in the southern Philippines, over a hundred pairs of shoes donated by employees of California-based SunPower Foundation definitely came a long way.
One hundred forty students from Salangsang Elementary School in the municipality of Lebak, and Salumping Elementary School in the municipality of Esperanza, both in this province will start going to school sporting their new pairs of shoes that were distributed, on behalf of the SunPower Foundation, by personnel of the Alliance for Mindanao and Multi-Regional Renewable/Rural Energy Development III (AMORE 3) Program on August 04. Some students walk up to three kilometers to get to the school (some of them on barefoot), and they are just excited to replace their slippers with shoes.
SunPower Foundation – the corporate social responsibility arm of solar photovoltaic manufacturing company, SunPower Corporation, which has manufacturing plants in Batangas and Laguna – recently held their annual teambuilding activity, and as an exercise, had its employees hand paint the shoes from Toms, an American shoe company that matches every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need.
In this case, those children in need that will receive the handpainted Toms shoes are children from Sultan Kudarat.
Shoes were not the only thing that have been given to the students. For the third phase of the AMORE Program, the SunPower Foundation donated solar modules to the two schools and 71 others in various parts of Mindanao and Luzon, for electricity. Access to electricity enables students to utilize learning-enhancement electric equipment such as educational television and ICT (Information, Communication and Technology).
A rural electrification program, AMORE utilizes renewable energy sources such as solar and hydro to give electricity access to remote off-grid rural schools and communities. AMORE is an alliance between the US Agency for International Development, the Department of Energy, SunPower Foundation, and Winrock International
