By David Stillman | Project Leader, Executive Director, PPAF
Your donations have made possible training, monitoring and cookstove distribution sessions in Haiti in January, and to help fund a science fair scheduled for May. Our purpose - building evidence to increase the impact of innovations – has gotten underway. Students, faculty and others involved have all declared this a motivating experience. Thanks to all donors and especially to our wonderful friends at Resource Furniture -www.resourcefurniture.com.
PPAF and eight Haitian and USA-based organizations are collaborating to improve lives and livelihoods, especially for girls and women. They include ECHO Global Farm (ECHO), Haiti Adolescent Girls Network (HAGN), Konbit pou Developman Commune Kote de Fer (KDCK), Persons Helping People (PHP), Solar CITIES Biogas, Solar Cookers International (SCI), Solavore LLC, and Université Notre Dame – Hinche (UND-Hinche). It is an amazing group, with activities in Port-au-Prince, Hinche and Cotes de Fer, Haiti, and with linkages in California, Florida, Minnesota, New York and elsewhere.
PPAF, KDCK and Solar CITIES installed several solar ovens and biodigesters for biogas cooking in 2017 on an experimental basis. This January Solavore/KDCK and PHP representatives took the next steps, monitoring how people are using the biodigesters in Hinche and Cotes de Fer, and providing training and distribution for 75 new owners of Solavore solar ovens. PHP donated or sold 37 of the ovens at subsidized prices in Cotes de Fer. Solavore sold 16 to HAGN for a girls’ entrepreneurship project in Port-au-Prince, and left 13 more in that city with a woman as a private vendor. Solavore provided the other nine to a community organization in southern Haiti. All are very satisfied with the results of these collaborations.
At the session for 16 HAGN “My Space” girls’ club members, the novice commercial cooks took great interest in how to use sunshine instead of charcoal. Monitoring their experiences will be important. At UND-Hinche, with encouragement from the Vice-Rector, 69 nursing, medical biology and biosciences students were certified last November in a Solar CITIES and KDCK short course on biodigesters. In January Solavore/KDCK and PHP representatives consulted further with the nine-member solar and biogas student coordinating committee, which uses a Facebook group for advice and photos, and they discussed plans for a science fair and for additional stoves and biodigesters.
In Cotes de Fer, a local manager is now in charge of solar oven sales, whether outright or on an installment plan, and a biodigester is proving its worth producing cooking gas for a pastor’s home and fertilizer for the garden. Internationally, SCI representatives have included references to our group’s work in public presentations. In Florida, PPAF is working with ECHO to monitor the performance of a biodigester installed last year by the University of South Florida and Solar CITIES; PPAF has obtained support for that from a nearby Rotary Club.
The collaborators are making valuable contributions and the Impact is already becoming evident. For PPAF’s priorities please see the donation categories of https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/tracking-clean-cookstoves-and-fuel-in-haiti/. Also see the photos at http://www.ppafoundation.org/gallery.html.
Forthcoming -- On the evening of March 14, during the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the UN Association of the USA Southern NYS Division and PPAF will co-host “Clean Cooking for Sustainable Development” at the UN Foundation in NYC. Please contact ppafoundation@gmail.com to register for this. Also a fun and fundraising event is being planned later in the spring, to take place at Resource Furniture. Stay tuned!
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