Hershey Chocolatiers have had a strong relationship with the people of Hershey, Pennsylvania for many years, but also have a relationship with Ghana, where their coco plants grow. To create a link between these two populations, they decided to use video conferencing in two elementary schools.
One Cisco video conferencing representative went to Ghana for two weeks where he was able to set up the video conferencing station at the school. While the conferencing setup was an overall success, there were several setbacks involved to make the equipment work properly. First, the school room in Ghana provided a small video conferencing space which was an open air room. There was little protection from the elements and very poor sound quality for the microphones. The microphones were picking up wildlife sounds and turning down the voices of the children who would be using the system. Another issue that was faced was the irregular power supply. Many parts of Ghana do not have regular power, so a generator was installed at the school in order to ensure consistent and streamlined video conferencing. This ended up being a smart choice as 5-minutes into their first video call, the power went out. Luckily the generator was already up and running so the crisis was averted. The last issue that needed to be faced was dealing with bandwidth. With connectivity only available at the town center, a microwave relay had to be installed to make it the last mile to the school.
With all of the problems addressed, the video conferencing experience has been delightful for the children in both locations. For the kids in Hershey Pennsylvania, they were able to learn about life in an indigenous culture- a completely foreign concept to them. For the children in Ghana, they were able to see also a completely new and different culture. One of the highlights for both parties was during a snow storm in Pennsylvania where the viewers in Ghana had never seen snow!
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