Dear Governor of Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast

We are year 7 students at the Aga Khan Academy, Mombasa. As part of our Service Learning class’s educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs we would like to develop a Service Learning project to identify the key challenges the local community face in GBAO and address them to the authorities and stakeholders for resolution. 

Our team conducted some research and identified that the people in some villages of the Bartang valley in Rushan district of Tajikistan have no access to reliable electricity. According to several sources, like Mountain Partnership and USAID, this problem causes a number of other  problems for the local communities affecting their well-being in terms of health, education and environment. For example, children cannot go to school during the winter season due to extremely  cold weather, especially in Bartang valley or cannot do their homeworks at home during the evenings due to darkness at houses. Some medical instruments need electricity to work and the lack of electricity may prevent them from working. To meet their needs for cooking and heating, people usually chop down trees and burn wood or use local bushes that also create environmental degradation in the area and the burning of the wood or local bushes causes indoor pollution, which can lead the households to get cardiorespiratory diseases.

After thoroughly  investigating and analyzing the current situation in Bartang valley with your support as a Governor of GBAO, we would like to address this problem to the higher government authorities and private sectors in order to secure their grants and loans and you could develop electrification projects consisting of small hydro power plants or solar stations for the communities in Bartang valley. And finally, with your support, we would also like to raise awareness about this problem.