'My choice is between going out there and collecting firewood and being raped, or for my husband to go out and get killed, and I would rather go and get raped,'. These stark words from women in North Uganda possibly explain the great human tragedy that is linked to the innocuous firewood cookstove and drives hundreds and thousands of engineers, social development experts and field workers to continue their unrelenting quest for the clean cook stove.
These words motivate people and organizations such as Veronique Barbelet of the World Food Programme to find solutions that can help solve the problem of firewood and the killer smoke from firewood and results in a collaboration like the one between Aprovecho and World Food Programme in Africa.
The World Food Programme now plans to use in Africa an Approvecho stove to cook meals for school children and refugee camps. The stove is built in a steel 55-gallon drum and has the capacity of cooking rice for 20 people with only a handful of wood sticks, 90 per cent less than what traditional stoves use.
An NPR report etches the journey of Aprovecho, improved cookstoves and the various efforts at fixing one of the biggest threats to women and children's health. The "rocket stove" Larry Winiarski invented in the 1980s is the prototype for Aprovecho's current crop of clean, efficient stoves, and his 10 principles have become the catechism for good stove design around the world.
Photo Courtesy: Aprovecho (Participants from the World Food Programme and a Kenyan NGO observe the flame of a top-burning Institutional Stove.)
To Read Full Story: Engineers Hone Clean Energy Stoves For the World
