A few years ago he was plucked from the obscurity of the Malawi countryside to speak to the TED Conference – a conference of ideas and visionaries. William Kamkwamba couldn’t afford school, but he decided to teach himself by looking at the diagrams in books at the library (his English wasn’t that good so he couldn’t really read). One that caught his eye was a book about windmills, so he set off to build one in his village to power a few lights and a radio. That led to people talking about the house with electricity, and bloggers mentioning this amazing story of a kid who make a windmill from a bunch of junk. That led to TED bringing him over to speak to the visionaries, who turned around and decided to sponsor this kid financially through high school and university. ]]>
To build a windmill.