UNC students use solar panel to help feed kids

(WGHP) — There are internships college students work at, and then there is real-life experience.

The group Solar Equity is the latter, and the students who run it wouldn’t trade it for everything.

Caroline White is the president of the organization, and Aaron Applegate is vice president.

Life-changing

The experience of doing all the work from identifying a good candidate to get solar panels, raising the money, purchasing the panels and hiring a company to professionally install them has changed their lives.

“For me, working in the climate change space, there’s no way I can do anything other than that in post-graduating,” White said.

“I would like to work in the renewable energy industry,” Applegate said.

His latest project is putting panels on the community food organization TABLE that provides meals to kids for free.

The organization is at UNC Chapel Hill and has been around for a few years.

“It started with Habitat for Humanity Homes out …near Hillsboro, installing solar panels,” White said. “It’s exciting how this impact is going to trickle down. While … we are … installing solar panels to save the food pantry money, it then trickles down to then being able to provide more food to kids.”

Benefits

Ashton Tippins is the CEO of TABLE and says the solar panels will save them $60,000 over their life and feed 40 kids for an entire year, but the benefits go beyond providing calories.

“We’ve even had parents let us know that, ‘Oh, we weren’t able to try these new fruits because we didn’t know if our kids would like them, so we couldn’t spend the money on it.’ And since they’ve been receiving food from TABLE, they’ve been able to try those fruits and enjoy them,” Tippins said.

She also said you’d be surprised who the kids become.

“We have seen such incredible individuals come through our doors: people with master’s degrees, people who have emigrated from other countries or refugees from other countries who have experienced really challenging situations,” Tippins said.

White hopes they can create other chapters beyond UNC.

“This is a big deal for how we’re setting an example of what can be done with solar energy and with the community impact that we’re creating … We’re really excited about the impact in Orange County and how it sets an example,” she said.

See more on this organization and its impact in this edition of the Buckley Report.

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