For many, a trip to Mexico in January carries with it images of idyllic beaches and cold drinks topped with miniature umbrellas. For Hailey resident Mat Gershater and his colleagues, it meant recycling solar panels to help provide free power to an elementary school in an impoverished neighborhood.
The trip was the first project for Greenscool, a nonprofit organization with a mission of installing renewable energy systems at schools around the world while educating students about sustainable technology.
Founded last fall by Michael Miller, CEO of Jackson, Wyo.,-based wind-power specialist Teton Power, Greenscool got off to an inauspicious start when a planned trip to Tanzania was cancelled after the current economic downturn dried up potential funding sources.
However, Gershater, the organization's co-director with professional skier and television producer Kina Pickett, didn't have a long wait before getting to work. Instead of flying halfway across the globe, Gershater, Pickett, Miller and four others jumped in a van in mid-January and drove to Guaymas, a city of 200,000 in the Mexican state of Sonora that sits on the Sea of Cortez more than 300 miles south of Tucson, Ariz. The trip south included over a day of driving and a $350 bribe at the border to bring in some spare panels.
Miller had already been to Guaymas in November at the behest of its mayor, Antonio Astiazaran Gutierrez, known to his constituents as el presidente, to install a wind turbine on the road that leads from the city to San Carlos, an affluent community popular with foreign retirees. During the trip, Miller noticed an elementary school in a barrio called Fatima and a large number of solar panels that were no longer serving their purpose of providing power to streetlights in San Carlos.
Due to an engineering mistake, the attached batteries had corroded, leaving the perfectly good solar panels sitting dormant in the sun. Miller had an idea of how they could be put to better use.
For Gershater, the trip, which lasted from Jan. 8-22, was yet another step in his commitment to teach children about renewable energy.
As the founder of Ketchum-based Mountain Adventure Tours kids' summer camp, Gershater has spent the last decade teaching his self-described brand of "envirotainment." Using the surroundings of the Wood River Valley and BaseCamp, a 13-acre property on the Big Lost River at the eastern end of Trail Creek Road, the camp provides a hands-on approach to discovering the natural world.
Gershater's passions for teaching and the environment have also taken him to Belize, where he runs a day camp for children in the small village of Camalote, and to Western ski resorts to help reduce power consumption during the 48 Straight ski events.
"The Guaymas project was really a culmination and consolidation of the work in Belize and with The Ski Tour," Gershater said. "It was a different kind of challenge in Fatima because people are just concerned with putting food on the table—it's largely survival mode."
But Gershater was surprised by the students' reaction to the project.
"They were really interested in how the solar panels worked, what they were made of and how they could take care of them," he said. "They really took ownership of the project by the end."
But the children's reaction wasn't the only surprise.
Joining the trip was a friend of Miller's from Jackson, Christian Beckwith, a climber, writer and founder of Alpinist Magazine who has traveled the world with a focus on adventure that often left little time for interaction with the local communities.
"For years, I've been afflicted with the climbing bug, and it has taken me into poverty," Beckwith wrote in an online journal. "But I never cared: I was always there to climb."
It didn't take Beckwith long to appreciate the multiple benefits the project would serve.
The school would get about 75 percent of its power from the panels but would still need to rely on a nearby oil-fired power plant that sent an inky cloud across the city every day.
"Its true value lay in its position above the schoolyard," Beckwith wrote. "For the schoolchildren, it would be the first time they'd ever heard of renewable energy or seen solar panels. The panels would stay on the roof year-in and year-out, introducing each incoming class of students to an idea they had never previously considered."
While Hailey master carpenter Mike Chase and Miller's son, Khyber, installed the panels with the help of three local electricians, Gershater and his sister, Jennie, spoke with hundreds of students about electricity and the importance of renewable energy.
"If even just one of these kids goes on to have an interest in renewable energy, than this project will prove more than successful," Gershater said.
Jon Duval:jduval@mtexpress
Kina Pickett, left, and Hailey resident Mat Gershater, right, remove a solar panel from a street light in San Carlos, Mexico, during a project for the nonprofit organization Greenscool. The 25 panels collected were then installed on an elementary school in Fatima, a barrio in the city of Guaymas.
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