The two schools could not seem more different, more disconnected by the world’s social order. Spotted on Chicago’s South Side, Mother McAuley High School hosts approximately 1,700 female students and typifies America’s middle-class life. Smiling faces and bright futures blanket the school’s West 99th Street campus. Located in Pichon, Haiti, the Lakal Pa Nou School holds 280 students in grades one through six. A collection of four one-story buildings, the students inhabit a school site sans electricity and plumbing, characteristic of the hardscrabble life students face each day. Seemingly unrelated, the two schools are nevertheless connected by one ambitious science project: a solar-powered biodiesel processor capable of delivering electricity and a degree of modern life to one of the world’s most poverty-stricken nations. It is a project, carried forth by Mother McAuley’s EcoMacs Club, which has taken on added importance following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. “With this unexpected event, the sooner we can get [the biodiesel processor] there the better, because they really need our help,” said Mother McAuley senior Mary O’Donnell, one of 10 students on the EcoMacs Biodiesel Team. It all begins In late November, Mother McAuley Science Chairperson Roz Iasillo led the EcoMacs to Thornridge High School for a look at the biodiesel processor students at the Dolton school had constructed. The educational trip coincided with a request from the Partner for People and Place, a biomass energy program seeking a solution to the Lakal Pa Nou School’s meager assets. With a collective decision to build a biodiesel processor for Lakal Pa Nou, located 60 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, and improve that school’s plight, Iasillo and the motivated EcoMacs confronted the task with spirit and purpose. The group committed more than 200 hours to planning and building the processor, including nearly 80 hours over Christmas break. The EcoMacs videotaped the entire process so that the project can be repeated in Haiti. “It’s been a complete whirlwind with a lot of hard work, trial and error and construction,” Iasillo said. To construct the $3,000 processor, the EcoMacs collected donations of products and money from area businesses. With the processor complete, the EcoMacs are now tackling the project’s second phase — transporting the processor to Haiti, a task made more difficult by the recent earthquake. Students have called media outlets to generate attention and held a raffle to raise funds. Hopes are high for the processor to arrive in Haiti by spring. “We initially planned to have the processor done around Easter break, but the earthquake added a sense of urgency and the girls responded,” Iasillo said. “We’ll have it there as soon as the folks down there can accommodate it.” How it works The processor will combine the seeds of the abundant Jatropha plant with solar-powered energy panels to create a sustainable system for producing fuel, which can earn cash for local families by way of producing fertilizer, soap and lamp fuel. Excess energy generated by the solar panels will be used to provide electricity for the school, thereby allowing the school to expand its curriculum beyond the sixth grade with night classes. It is a project that offers great potential to the Lakal Pa Nou School and the local Pichon community, a fact not forgotten by Iasillo or her students. “We stress the Catholic ideal of being of service and this was a humanitarian project from the start,” Iasillo said. “The students invested a lot of time and energy here and will not get much in return except the ability to share what they have with those who have little.”