Improve 1500 Lives with Clean Cooking in Darfur

Since our last report, we have impacted the lives of 265,704 people in Sudan, saving them time, money, and exposure to harmful cooking smoke with our primary partner Sustainable Action Group (SAG), a Sudanese NGO with operations in Sudan’s IDP camps. At the start of the project, there was no earned revenue from stove sales, and all work completed by SAG was supported by PE. As stove sales have now ramped up, with over 12,000 stoves having been sold in the past 2 years, we have successfully transitioned much of the day-to-day responsibilities involved in running the project over to SAG’s team. With this transition, SAG has hired a local team to oversee sales, distributor relationships, assembly and product maintenance.

As we think about the future, we are most excited about investing in projects that have the potential for revenue generation and long-term economic sustainability. With increasing revenue from stove sales we believe we are on the path to leaving the project in a good place. Toward the end of the project period, we finalized a contract for carbon offset program management. Since signing, the carbon offset project management firm has worked closely with the team to go through the required steps in order to register & approve our project with the Gold Standard Foundation. We anticipate selling our first credits in early 2016; revenue generated from this project will also help bolster the sustainability of locally run programming and ensure access to the BDS for IDP and re-settled populations for years to come.

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Since our last report, our local partner Sustainable Action Group (SAG) has assembled 3000 additional stoves, and approximately 1170 have been distributed in Darfur through community-based organizations (CBOs). In addition to the 11 CBOs already working on the project, 5 new CBOs joined the program, thus increasing our distribution numbers. We have also seen a notable increase in the repayment rate of the stoves that are sold to users (as opposed to donated). In addition, new local partners in West and South Darfur, Nidaa and Malam Darfur Peace and Development, have expressed interest in scaling up their activities, as they have seen success with stove distribution in their respective regions.

We are excited to announce that we are conducting our first mobile-phone based impact survey in Darfur. The survey, which is administered to users via their mobile phones, is collecting information from 300 stoves users across North Darfur to investigate their economic spending and savings before and after receiving the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (BDS). Thus far, we have collected information from 100 women and will continue until we reach 300 total users who have responded. From preliminary analysis we have observed a decrease in fuel spending by BDS users, and with deeper analysis we anticipate gaining a better understanding of our users’ habits, preferences, and BDS added vale as perceived by our clients. This information is crucial in evaluating the success of our work in Darfur and will help us adapt our stove and distribution models to better suit our clients’ needs.

Links:

• Visit our website.