People of northern Kerala were brutally affected by the flood of 2019. IEEE Student Branch decided to provide engineering solutions for the effected.

One of the major problems they faced, (from the information that we got) is that they had regular power outages hence difficult to charge their phones. This affected their communication with concerned authorities. There were large groups of people stranded in various places without proper communication. So even a bit of battery charge in such cases could save hundreds of lives. Also, they were in need of flashlights. Most of the smartphones nowadays have a flashlight in-built, so rather than sending flashlights we put our effort solely into building power banks.

This is how we decided to build a temporary but reliable source of charging their phones. We communicated with the experts in the domain and who has already build such a power backup. Though not meant for long term usage, they Duracell powered backup would work, they said. The large network of IEEE students and Young Professionals provided their full support. People from many parts of kerala joined hands and worked towards the common goal.

Building a temporary solution for this emergency situation was the task at hand. But we needed to make sure of a few things -

1. That it reaches the right people at the right time - Logistics

For that we contacted a rescue team going from southern part of kerala going to the Northern parts solely to volunteer for rescue activities. We handed over the completed power banks to them.

2. It does no harm to the user - Safety first

We wrote down precaution messages and instructions on how to use these power banks in all the individual packages and that too in English and Malayalam Languages. We made sure that the charging rate was less than 0.5 amps hence lowering the chances of negatively affecting the battery life.

3. It does no harm to the environment - adverse environmental impact

The normal batteries we use have chemicals that are difficult to dispose and cause harm to the environment. Hence we used Duracell batteries

A power bank made with 4 Duracell batteries, each of 1.5v connected in series. It adds upto 4*1.5 = 6v with more than 2000 mah capacity that will charge a typical mobile battery with 20-40 % of charge.

We managed to complete 60+ units in a short period of 2 days. Glad we could create a positive impact in their lives. Much appreciation came from communities and media as well.