By Debra Stein | Associate Director
BACKGROUND
Since the program’s inception, the Darfur Stoves Project has now provided 32,486 fuel-efficient cookstoves to Darfuri women who have survived the conflict there. These stoves – designed specifically for the terrain, cooking style and cookware of the Darfuri people – require significantly less firewood, thereby decreasing women’s exposure to violence while collecting firewood and/or their need to trade food rations for fuel. The Darfur Stoves Project is the flagship initiative of Potential Energy, Inc, which was recognized as an independent 501(c)3 in 2011.
POTENTIAL ENERGY’S MISSION
Poor people in developing countries are excluded by cost, distance or lack of voice from accessing technologies that could promote their health, improve their livelihoods and help them chart an environmentally sustainable path to development. Potential Energy aims to change this. Potential Energy provides simple, life-saving technologies to help the very poorest people in the world improve their lives.
PROJECT UPDATE
Potential Energy has distributed 32,486 fuel-efficient cookstoves since the Darfur Stoves Project’s inception. Based on the average Darfuri household size, we estimate that these stoves have impacted 194,973 people and have resulted in $58 million in firewood costs saved. An additional 5,000 Berkeley-Darfur Stove flat-kits are currently being assembled at our shop in North Darfur and will be distributed by our partners by the end of 2013. In addition, we have launched a second cookstove project in Ethiopia and will continue to apply lessons learned from our work in Darfur to this new project.
NEW ACTIVITIES
Recruiting and Training Local Sales Agents
We have continued our efforts to train women in Darfur to serve as local sales agents of our stove. At this time, we have recruited a sufficient number of sales agents to meet our forecast distribution of 15,000 stoves in total by the end of this year. These trainings for sales agents have focused on proper usage of the stove and environmental and health benefits so that they can relay these messages when promoting the stove. In addition, Potential Energy created training materials for community based organizations in Darfur to deliver to new stove users to ensure that they are using the stoves properly to maximize its fuel-efficiency.
Expanding Sales Strategy
Based on our learnings from our marketing trial conducting in 2012 in which we sold 640 stoves, in 2013 we began selling stoves in Darfur on a larger scale. We are currently selling 50% of our stoves in rural and urban areas and distributing the other 50% for free within the internally displaced peoples (IDP) camps. Selling the stove (albeit at a subsized price) not only enables us to help the project to become more sustainable (so that we can reach even more women in Darfur) but also serves as a valuable feedback mechanism. If women in Darfur are eager to spend their money on our stove, we can be assured that it is a product that they value and will continue to use. Our local partners report that demand for the Berkeley-Darfur Stove has been steadily rising in different communities and segments of society. Moving forward, we will continue our efforts with our partners to market the stove at ~$8 if paid for upfront and ~$10 if paid for in four monthly installments.
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