Akhil Singh brings light to more Indian villages

Akhil Singh, a Country Day senior, returned to India this summer and helped install solar-powered lights in three villages.

By Jeff Siner/jsiner@charlotteobserver.com

(I wrote about Akhil and his quest to bring villages light in an April story.)

He raised the money for an organization that installs the lights, called Light a Billion Lives, headquartered in New Delhi.

But instead of visiting villages as he has in the past, Akhil lived in them for two weeks.

"It was really humbling, but at the same time it's a whole different part of the world," he said.

He had to endure living with an old man who was convinced Akhil was trying to rob his village, getting sick once and quickly learning the colloquialisms of the Hindi dialect the villagers spoke.

"It was good material for my college essay," he joked.

But his trip was also enjoyable. Akhil said he liked the communal aspect of the village and how important family and community were to the people.

"You get the whole village together in the evening time, and you eat dinner together and sit at the marketplace together," he said.

Akhil has now lit five villages -- at a cost of about $3,500 each -- and is in the process of funding a sixth. He tackled learning how to fundraise and ask corporations for donations with no experience, but he's been successful: Since 2010, he's raised more than $18,000.

"The corporate fundraising turned around really well, and I may be lucky enough to get an additional three villages," Akhil said.

He'll continue his fundraising efforts this year and go to India again next summer to install more lighting.

Olympic senior learns valuable lessons at Livingston & Haven

Between a full-time job life-guarding, interning for the industrial technology company Livingston & Haven and embarking on a mission trip, Jenni Kesel, 17, had an action-packed summer and said she learned a lot along the way.

At Livingston & Haven, Jenni worked at the department in charge of making prototypes involving solar power. She helped create the new solar-powered cell phone chargers now at Carowinds.

In addition to doing a lot of hands-on engineering, Jenni said she learned a couple of important lessons from the internship.

"First thing, never be afraid to ask a question," she said. "At first, I was really afraid to because I felt like the underdog coming in, especially because I was the only girl intern."

Jenni said she initially felt insecurities about having to prove herself among the men. "I felt like I had a reputation to build, but I learned not to worry about it. The point of me being there was to learn."

Another lesson Jenni learned was to accept times when she failed and to learn from them.

She said she used to get frustrated when she was building something that would break or wouldn't work because she felt like she was creating more problems instead of helping.

"I had to take time to humble myself and say, this is why I'm here, to learn."