When Unai Torres, a 21-year-old student on the LEINN (Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation) programme at Mondragon Unibertsitatea’s Barcelona campus, shared his project idea with his family, the excitement at home was immense. Together with his partner, Judit García, 20, he has created the project Energy for Children, which aims to install solar panels at the Pravas Foundation orphanage in Mumbai, India. The initiative, which seeks to raise €13,000, will provide electricity and hot water, while also helping the centre reduce its operating costs.
“It all comes from a very personal story”, Unai Torres explains in a telephone interview. “My little brother, who is now six years old, was adopted from India and spent the first two years of his life in an orphanage there”, he adds. As part of the LEINN degree, students must complete an international training trip each academic year — Finland in the first year, the United States in the second and an emerging country in the third. When Unai found out that his destination would be Mumbai, India, he immediately knew what project he wanted to develop. “I want to give something back to those who took care of my brother in his early years”, he explains. “My family thought it was a great idea. They are very open to the initiative and incredibly supportive, and they are helping me a lot to tell my brother’s story”.
Due to logistical and communication difficulties, the project will ultimately not be carried out at the same orphanage where his brother lived, but at the Pravas Foundation in Mumbai. The centre permanently houses 25 children and provides services to a further 1,200 children within the community. It was selected after an exhaustive transparency assessment. “We had a lot of difficulty contacting my brother’s orphanage. They didn’t respond, and on top of that, our trip was to Mumbai, while the orphanage was in Bhopal, which made travelling there very complicated”, Unai explains. The two cities are nearly 800 kilometres apart.
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