Improved Cookstoves for 25 Liberian Village Homes

Thanks so much to all of you who donated to Village Improvement Project’s Improved Cookstoves for 25 Liberian Village Homes during the May and June fundraising campaign. GlobalGiving matched your donations at 60%. In addition, the Cookstove Project earned a bonus prize of $1,200 for coming in second place out of the hundreds of other projects that were part of the matching-fund campaign. The Improved Cookstoves Project now has $12,108 in funding which is enough to move the project forward on the ground in Liberia.

VIP President/CEO Dr. LeRoy Boikai is now making plans to travel to Liberia sometime this fall to conduct field tests with Liberian-made rocket stoves. He will be accompanied by a skilled technician who will demonstrate the rocket stoves and teach village women how to use them when cooking their family’s meals. The plan is to recruit a small number of village women who are willing to try the new stoves for a few weeks and then provide feedback to Dr. Boikai. We need to know how the stoves perform in daily use and whether or not the women would be willing to give up their old, three-stone open fire pit or coal pots in favor of the improved stove.

Dr. Boikai and his team will also be talking with the women taking part in the field test and their families to determine the extent of the benefits of using rocket stoves they experienced versus the traditional method. Did they use significantly less fuel? Was there less unhealthy smoke? Were they able to save money by not buying coal? Most importantly, are the benefits of using a rocket stove enough for them to make the switch permanently?

Stay tuned! A future report will have the results of the field test and Dr. Boikai’s observations which will shape the Improved Cookstove Project going forward.

Please share our project with friends and loved ones. We'd like to hear from you about what it means to be a donor to VIP's Improved Cookstove Project.

Links:

• Get the latest updates on VIP's website.

Traditional cooking methods in Liberia using firewood and coal can have major negative impact on air quality, health and the environment. In the last two years, VIP has had the goal of introducing rocket stoves as an alternative to using coal pot and biomass three-stone open pit for cooking. However, our improved cook stove project has not taken off like our second project, solar lanterns. While there are now close to 500 families with solar lanterns, our fund raising for cook stoves has lagged behind and we have not gone beyond the pilot phase of a few families using our prototype rocket stove.

Now that the solar lantern project is scaling up, VIP will turn its focus in 2017 to raising the funds needed to expand the improved cook stove project in Liberia. At the end of 2016, we shipped a welding machine with accessories to begin fabricating some rocket stoves for more field testing and distribution. Funds raised in 2017 will allow us to hire the services of an expert welder, purchase raw materials, distribute cook stoves, and conduct impact studies.

While the solar lantern project has been operating in Bomi and Montserrado Counties, VIP's improved cook stove project will begin in Grand Cape Mount County, Western Liberia.

As always, the Board of Directors of VIP thanks you for your investment and partnership. We hope you find this partnership valuable and worthwhile. Please consider telling your friends and family about our project - share the link on your blogs or social networks, use the tell-a-friend feature on the project page to email your network, or just bring us up in conversation.

P.S. Stay tuned for what 2017 will allow our partnership to bring in improving air quality, health and the environment of rural towns and villages in Liberia.