Project brightens rural areas in Philippines

MANILA - Jaderick Castillo, a 12-year-old Filipino boy from a mountain village in the northern Philippine province of Zambales, can finally get to watch his idols play basketball live on TV, thanks to a Chinese-funded solar power project that brought electricity to this far-flung village.

Castillo's remote impoverished village has been without electricity for decades until this month when the Chinese company State Grid Corporation of China donated solar stations to the community.

The poverty alleviation project, called "Brighten Up", provides electricity to nearly 400 houses owned by about 1,000 villagers, allowing them to make use of solar energy to light up their houses and power the appliances in the village.