They say necessity is the mother of invention. When Daniela Orozco noticed a growing presence of homeless people on her walk to San Fernando High School, she decided to help. From a low-income family herself, donating money was not an option. That was the jumping-off point for the invention of the solar-powered tent.

DIY Girls

Daniela and a group of twelve San Fernando High School girls set out to help the homeless in their neighborhood. As a result, they worked with DIY Girls to create solar-powered tents designed for easy travel.

DIY Girls helps increase girls’ interest and success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) studies. To date, they have helped 3,785 girls in Los Angeles.

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Novice Inventors

The group of twelve female students went into the project as novices. They had no experience in engineering and depended on YouTube, Google, and old-fashioned trial-and-error to complete the job. The project required skills in coding, soldering and hands-on sewing.

“[There was] a lot of Googling,” Daniela says.

Helping Her Alma Mater

Evelyn Gomez, former executive and program director for DIY Girls was a graduate of San Fernando. She studied engineering at MIT and UCLA and heard about the efforts at her old high school. She decided she wanted to help. “I really wanted the girls to have this empowering experience where their voices and their skills could be put to help people,” says Evelyn.

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Hands-on Project

Evelyn spoke to the San Fernando calculus teacher to see if she could work with the girls. “I was able to do a hands-on project with the girls and really tell them about the possibility of inventing something that no one has ever thought of before, nobody has ever seen before,” she says.

Solar Panel Tent Concept

Daniela says the tent design is portable and lightweight while still accommodating a solar panel box. “So on the box itself there are solar panels, and that solar panel is connected to an Arduino board, and that Arduino board was coded such that when a button was pressed, you can turn on the LED lights and the UVC lights to disinfect the inside of the tent,” she explains. “The solar panel itself is connected to a battery pack on the inside of the box.”

Distributed To The Homeless

The girls want to make sure the tents are properly distributed to anyone who needs them, as they were designed for good intentions. “It is capable of helping refugees that are displaced from their homes. It has the potential to help a lot of different people,” says Evelyn.

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Role Models

Throughout her education Evelyn noted she was often the only Hispanic person in the room. As a result, she has become a role model to the girls so they can pursue an education in STEM. “I think it allows you to see yourself in that position,” she says. “We have no one else to turn to for answers. We need to come up with the answers ourselves. It’s very empowering.”

Daniela says having Evelyn there to help blaze a trail as a Hispanic woman was inspiring. “…realizing that someone from my community was able to do it makes me push myself and be like, ‘OK, Evelyn did it. You can do it, too,’ or, ‘Many of the other mentors we had did it. I can do it, too.’ ”

*Article originally appeared at Healthy Holistic Living. Reprinted with permission.