Last Thurs­day, the MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIC-IT) in­stalled the first of five So­lar­PoniX units at Union Clax­ton Bay Sec­ondary School, as part of a wider na­tion­al ef­fort led by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. The project, in­spired by the Na­pari­ma Col­lege So­lar/Agri­cul­ture project, will ex­pand to 26 schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­low­ing stu­dents to en­gage with cli­mate-smart agri­cul­ture and re­new­able en­er­gy in a prac­ti­cal and mean­ing­ful way.

Man­u­fac­tured by MIC-IT in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Proto­FabTT, the award-win­ning So­lar­PoniX Cli­mate-Smart Tow­er Gar­den is a ful­ly so­lar-pow­ered, cli­mate-adap­tive farm­ing unit. Ca­pa­ble of grow­ing up to 105 crops with­in a sin­gle square me­tre, it was de­signed with ur­ban farm­ing and ed­u­ca­tion in mind. The tow­er gar­den can con­nect to cell phones for da­ta log­ging and en­ables in­di­vid­u­als to achieve food se­cu­ri­ty at home. It max­imis­es land use, con­serves wa­ter, and of­fers an off-grid so­lu­tion to food pro­duc­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

MIC-IT will over­see the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion, while the school com­mu­ni­ty will as­sem­ble the tow­er gar­dens for op­er­a­tion. In­struc­tors and stu­dents from MIC-IT’s Re­new­able En­er­gy Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme (REAP) will mon­i­tor each school’s progress, en­sur­ing con­sis­tent sup­port and long-term im­pact.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to em­pow­er schools with the knowl­edge and skills need­ed to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty sus­tain­able and in­no­v­a­tive agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices, MIC-IT will de­liv­er train­ing in hy­dro­pon­ics, aquapon­ics, So­lar­PoniX as­sem­bly and main­te­nance, and Agri-en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Recog­nised for its in­no­va­tion and so­cial val­ue, the So­lar­PoniX was award­ed Best So­cial In­vest­ment Project at the 2024 TT En­er­gy Con­fer­ence. Through this ini­tia­tive, MIC-IT re­in­forces its com­mit­ment to ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and a more sus­tain­able fu­ture.