This week's Hero Highlight features William Kamkwamba. He is a Malawian innovator, engineer, and author. Due to local famine, his family couldn't afford secondary school fees, so William was unable to attend school for five years. He continued his education on his own by checking out and studying books from his local lending library and was inspired by an American textbook called USING ENERGY. He gained fame in his country in 2002 when he built a wind turbine to power multiple electrical appliances in his family's house in Wimbe, 32 km east of Kasungu, using blue gum trees, bicycle parts, and materials collected in a local scrapyard. He wrote the book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind that later became a movie under the same title that is available to stream on Netflix.
William graduated from Dartmouth College in 2014 and has completed projects such as water pumps for irrigation, secondary school scholarships, and the Wimbe Primary School. His foundation Moving Windmills works to pursue rural economic development and education projects in Malawi, Africa.