Children aged five through to the senior years were learning STEM skills and about renewable energy, while providing new learning opportunities for children living on the Kokoda Track, in Papua New Guinea.

Principal Cathy Crick said the program was an eye-opener for the students, who were also learning important skills like "collaborative work" and problem solving. 

"It's looking beyond our own little community where we have full access to energy, lights and electricity to help people in Papua New Guinea who don't have that access," Ms Crick said. 

"We had a look at video of people in Africa who had been helped and it's good to stretch the students a little bit and get them out of their own surroundings to know that they can help others." 

The students were pulling apart the light and connecting all the points together and then wrote a letter for the recipient. 

"Hopefully they can have a bit of reciprocation with the recipient of the light and be pen-pals," Ms Crick said. 

The program was run by Origin volunteers and manager of community partner advocacy for Origin Foundation Emma Barton said she was "surprised" at how "capable" kindergarten and year 1 students were when they were building the lights. 

"They've been quite incredible and they've been really engaged in the topic, talking about the importance of electricity and how their day might be different if they didn't have it," Ms Barton said. 

"In turn, we're hoping to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers here in Uranquinty.

Ms Barton said the foundation is focused on education as it can "transform lives and communities". 

"We have a particular interest in encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM," she said. 

"We just don't have enough female STEM professionals in this country.

"We need to start early and inspire and show them the humanitarian potential of STEM as we know that encourages lots of different people to get involved."

According to the Origin Foundation, 1.4 billion people globally do not have access to modern electricity and many communities rely on dangerous and unsustainable sources of fuel, like kerosene, diesel, wood or candles. 

The foundation is working in collaboration with a Brisbane-based charity Solar Buddy, who have distributed these solar lights throughout the South Pacific, South East Asia and Africa. 

Evaluation has shown that children are studying up to 38 per cent longer as more than 40,000 lights have already been distributed.