The Role Of Micro-Entrepreneurs In Promoting Stove Sales

The enterprise route to addressing development issues is finding resonance in efforts to provide both a solution and a lasting, self-sufficient entity that can sustain the change, as in the case of improved cookstoves to combat indoor air pollution. A Forbes CSR blog posting by Nicole Skibola, for example, highlights the efforts of Adventure Project to create mirco-entrepreneurs to sell stoves in rural villages earlier in Africa and now in Haiti.

The Adventure Project works with on-the-ground partners who then manufacture and distribute a poverty-alleviating product or service tailored to customers at the bottom of the consumer pyramid.

According to the report, Adventure Project works with nonprofit International Lifeline Fund (ILF), which has been building stove programs in Uganda, Sudan, & Kenya. The stoves are produced locally, and ILF trains a sales force of female micro-entrepreneurs to sell the stoves in rural villages. The ILF stove is coal powered, but uses half the amount of coal of current stoves and has very low emissions. It has an insulated combustion chamber as opposed to an open fire. It cooks food at a higher temperature, as well, cutting down on the time spent cooking.

The stoves are sold at subsidized rates villagers can afford. ILF, in partnership with the Adventure Project, scaled the project to Haiti after the earthquake hit. ILF is now in the process of setting up a local factory so it can continue to distribute more stoves in Haiti, and build a sustainable social enterprise.

According to the ILF website, "Understanding that the long-term sustainability of its fuel efficient stove program depends on the genius of the free market, Lifeline has developed an affordable metallic version of its stove and set up a “factory” in Northern Uganda with the capacity to produce more than 1,000 of them each month.

Lifeline has since fostered a vibrant commercial market for these stoves through a concerted advertizing campaign and the creation of a sales force of some three dozen female micro-entrepreneurs who it has set up as stove vendors. In short, Lifeline’s FES program is building local capacity – creating jobs for skilled laborers and independent salespersons while, at the same time, improving the health and livelihoods of their customers."

Pointing out that the aid and charity model to fix social problems fail to deliver poverty alleviation strategies, Beck Straw, co-founder of the Adventure Project, says supporting a new class of micro-entrepreneurs results increating a lifestyle of self-sufficiency, rather than one of aid-dependence.

“In today’s economy, businesses and their consumers understand the importance of creating jobs. It’s a matter of changing perceptions – we need to teach our businesses, and our consumers, that investing in social ventures will save lives and spur economic growth,” Straw is quoted as saying.

Read the full story, "Cleaner Cookstoves For Christmas"