Students turn rainmaker; to build solar-powered irrigation systems in South Sudan

U of T student and Rainmaker Enterprise founder James Madhier (right) and Anna Jiang, a civil engineer, want to build solar-powered irrigation systems starting in Madhier’s hometown in South Sudan. Rainmaker aims to combat food insecurity caused by droughts. (SUPPLIED)

Students turn rainmaker; to build solar-powered irrigation systems in South Sudan

Photo: U of T student and Rainmaker Enterprise founder James Madhier (right) and Anna Jiang, a civil engineer, want to build solar-powered irrigation systems starting in Madhier’s hometown in South Sudan. Rainmaker aims to combat food insecurity caused by droughts. (SUPPLIED)

‘I can’t just turn my back’: U of T student and former refugee to bring water crisis solutions to areas in need

Rainmaker aims to combat food insecurity caused by droughts.

University of Toronto student James Madhier was doing research on a barren farm in Ghana in May 2016, when the landowner, a young mother, approached him with her small child in tow.

Madhier, there to study solar-powered farming, expected the woman might simply introduce herself to the researchers, or ask about sustainable water solutions they were exploring that could help her farm — a cocoa farm intercropped with plantain, which had been decimated by a drought.

“We were really shocked,” said Madhier, 29. It was the best thing she could think to do to help her child, he said, a sentiment he sympathized with.

“I left thinking it was not long ago that I was in a similar situation, helpless in South Sudan during the war, and now here I am. I’m coming back from a developed world, Toronto, as a researcher. I can’t just turn my back.”

On the plane back to Toronto, Madhier drew up a plan for what would become Rainmaker Enterprise — a non-profit development organization that aims to bring solar-powered irrigation infrastructure to Africa to combat food insecurity caused by droughts. He founded it in 2017.

Rainmaker Enterprise will host its first annual Water for Peace Cocktail Reception on Saturday, featuring keynote remarks by Roméo Dallaire, founder of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, which aims to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and South Sudanese-Canadian award-winning musician and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal. The gala will raise funds for Rainmaker’s upcoming pilot project in South Sudan.

The initiative comes just five years after Madhier was selected as one of 129 student refugees given the opportunity to come to Canada for post-secondary education through the World University Service of Canada’s (WUSC) Student Refugee Program.

Madhier grew up under the abiding threat of bombings, militia groups, and famine as generations of civil war ravaged on in South Sudan. He eventually fled the country at 15, finding his way to a Kenyan refugee camp and, through WUSC, went on to attend the University of Toronto, where he is completing peace, conflict and justice studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

thestar.com

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