Project Introduction
The Mekong River Sun Village project was jointly developed by the Shenzhen Foundation for International Exchange and Cooperation, governments and charities of the Mekong River countries, and the Shenzhen Guangfu company. Focusing on the two UN SDGs of “affordable clean energy” and “decent work and economic growth”, the Foundation is working together with other related parties to address the challenges of insufficient electric power production, lack of power supply facilities and high costs of power usage in remote areas of the Mekong River countries. Through the introduction of creative technological applications with the distribution of photovoltaic power generation as their core, the project provides a solution for increasing the coverage rate of power consumption in the countries in question and improving the livelihoods of the local people in a sustainable fashion.
The initial pilot project has already been smoothly carried out in Cambodia’s Takéo Province, providing 300 solar power facilities to local families and public areas, and reaching 8000 beneficiaries. In March 2019 the memorandum of cooperation for the second phase of the Sun Village project was formally signed, officially kicking off Phase 2.0 of the project.
As well as Cambodia, Myanmar was also included as one of the project countries during the second phase. In July 2019 the Foundation signed a project cooperation agreement with the Duqingji Foundation, guided by the State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi. In June 2020 the first phase of the “Mekong River Sun Village” project in Myanmar was jointly launched in the country’s Magway Division, with 300 small-scale distributed solar power generators and 1700 solar powered table lamps donated to the families, temples and schools of the villages of Ashay Thiri and Ywar Thit, in the Pakokku District of Magway Division. The benefiting villages announced the establishment of separate management committees, which completed the project’s distribution of goods and trial installations working alongside the project’s initiators from Shenzhen and Myanmar, as well as being responsible for the follow-up logistical management. Apart from this, the project also donated 32 medium-sized distributed solar power generators to support the construction of Myanmar’s community libraries.
