(ABC 6 News)- The 7th grade science classrooms are lighting up this week at Stewartville Middle School as students continue their work with solar suitcases, brought on by We Share Solar in California.

The finished product is expected to be shipped overseas to Africa when it’s all said and done.

“I like building it and I like how’s it going to go to help people,” said Stewartville middle school 7th grader Katherine Chappuis.

Each student is separated into 5 groups as part of the project. There’s the reporters like Savannah Van Den Hemel.

“We had to go around and take videos and pictures of the different groups, and it was really fun and we got to work with like our entire team, and like interview different people,” Van Den Hemel said.

The engineers who actually build the suitcases, like Katherine Chappius.

“For building the boxes, we had to like figure out where to put everything and we did a lot of wiring,” Chappius.

The artists like Julia Ferrie.

“We are designing the inside cover of our solar suitcase. We decided to represent our school by making the Tiger logo,” Ferrie said.

And quality control and community relations. All working as a team each class period. One teacher at school talking about how the solar suitcases came to be.

“In March, we kind of had to decide was this something we were interested in, and when we talked as a STEAM group, we said ‘yes, this is something that’s amazing.’ Anytime we can provide students with opportunity to go outside the classroom, is an amazing opportunity,” said Stewartville MS 6th and 7th grade teacher Kaysie Manion.

She mentions what her favorite part has been through it all.

“It’s just so cool to see the students do such a wide variety of things, that I don’t know they thought they can do when we first started this project,” Manion said.

The middle schoolers are expected to be working with the suitcases until Thursday. Then they’ll go to another school in Southeast Minnesota before the final product is sent oversees.

You can find more information on these solar suitcases on the We Share Solar website.