Tracking clean cookstoves & fuel in Haiti

Dear friends and supporters,

Haiti continues to experience great stress and insecurity, especially in the capital city.  However, PPAF, Haitian colleagues, and international friends are making progress in Hinche and Jacmel. 

In this report, we especially want to highlight a new effort in and around Hinche, where a collaborator has donated sets of solar cookers to several orphanages.  PPAF is supporting demonstrations, training, and encouragement of their use. The left side of the picture above shows firewood under a cooking pot – the usual way meals are cooked for the children in these orphanages.  On the right side is a demonstration of cooking with sunshine – a welcome initiative.  About 50 small children live at each of the orphanages.  Cooks and primary school teachers are on the staff.  Some children have lost their parents, but others are from destitute families. Firewood, bought or collected, is a daily burden for all, with financial and health costs.

Please have a look at the photos that are attached to this report. They show the steps in a demonstration at one of these orphanages.  It is managed by a young woman who is a recent graduate of the University Notre Dame d’Haiti in Hinche.  The teaching and reporting are by another of its graduates.  He is linked to PPAF and several colleagues in the USA for advice and financial support.  We aim to promote and monitor the progress of solar cooking at several orphanages.  Management, cooks, and solar cookers are already there.  Recognition of the challenge of firewood and the opportunity to reduce it by solar cooking is already there.  We are glad for the efforts of the collaborators.  We will report next time on how this proceeds!

Work in Jacmel currently includes testing and demonstrations of two types of solar cookers – one imported and the other built locally. PPAF and colleagues have devised a Google.Doc form for reporting results. It is easier to use than the previous form and it better captures the desired information.  PPAF has also revived and expanded the preparation of illustrated recipe pages in French and English.  A Haitian colleague conducts, photographs, reports, and translates the details of solar cooking tests, and a PPAF intern edits and mounts the relevant information.  The pages will help provide information and encouragement to the orphanage program in Hinche. They will also be useful to solar cooking classes at the Art Creation Foundation for  Children in Jacmel.

Looking to the future, many people in Jacmel, Hinche, and Cotes de Fer say they want to obtain and use solar cookers.  PPAF wants to be able to stimulate the manufacture or assembly and distribution of these.  While the security conditions in the country currently impede such possibilities, planning and fundraising are underway.

Thanks to all for your support!  Again, please have a look at the photos attached to this report. Join in our concern and enthusiasm.

Links:

• Public-Private Alliance Foundation - website