My interview with William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

October 10th, 2009 by Frankie De Soto

I was very impressed with one of the speakers that presented at TEDxSMU and that’s William Kamkwamba. Why do you ask? Well, at age 12 he actually taught himself how to repair radios and understand the functionality of a generator. He was inspired by a picture of a windmill in a 8th grade science book to build his own to help generate electricity for his village during a very serious drought. With just scrap parts he built a wind mobile that produced enough volts to power 4 light bulbs and charge mobile phones and even a second windmill that pumped water.

After buying his book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, I managed to do a quick interview with him while he was signing my book. At first, I just wanted to ask him if he succeeded the first time. “Not the first time.” William said. “It gets frustrating and I failed a couple of times, but it’s ok to fail.” I agree, failing is part of the process of succeeding in anything that you do. William never gave up on his windmill and after a few trials and errors, he got it to work. Now, if William can build a windmill at 14, than anybody can achieve what they dream of doing. Like William says, “It’s ok to fail.” If you like to order his book and make a donation to his village in Malawi check out his website.

Tags: TED, TEDxSMU