A gift in my dream!

MSC archived stories - October 27, 2018

The founder of StoveTeam International (Nancy Hughes) talked about 3 billion people in the world still use open-fire cooking method, and the challenge being the abandoning of fuel-efficient stoves after a period of use. [youtu.be/DNQ6oXrRHwo]

Juliana’s family uses a wood burning stove for cooking at home. I wanted to gift the family a portable improved biomass cookstove to replace their current stove with the benefits of reduced indoor air pollution, fuel wood usage and cooking time.

 

I was fortunate enough to find a well known local entrepreneur, Joshua Guinto from the Bicol region [youtu.be/b_AoNuFhkYY?t=33m35s]. He was a former technical consultant for the Save the Children on their project with Disaster Risk Reduction Program and Waste Management in Bulacan between 2015 to 2017 – working with/for the children is among his passion.

 

In July of this year, I partnered with Joshua to build a stove for around $70 – I chose “PPBrick Stove Kitchen Model” (released in May 2018) from his latest catalog, then the funds were sent, he sent me the user manual along with fascinating photos of the stove in the making; even used the same stove once built to prepare a demo video in Filipino. [youtu.be/X_K33NobPa4]

 

Manufacturing process:

They had some stocks of bricks and ordered metal canisters. First, started fine cutting/polishing the bricks that were earlier baked in the kiln. The last component to be fixed was the skirt on the stove top. Then they started firing it up to get the (wet) bricks fully dried in order to drop the weight from 65 to 45 pounds. The stove has handles and a sturdy metal canister and could withstand bumps and humps on the road during transport.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They also managed to get a research team of students to work on the project.

 

But, when we were just about ready to send it off to the cargo company for shipment, CI informed me that, unfortunately the family does not want to change their traditional way of cooking. We all received the news with great disappointment.

 

Joshua wrote to tell me.. “This is a gift well meant from you and my work well crafted by my team. But what can we do? I wonder how the communication between the families and the CI transpired. So many questions… did they show the family the video clips. Did they explain the hazards of household air pollution? Did they explain well enough how convenient it would be and the savings they will earn once they learned how to use the stove? These questions only they can answer.”

 

I personally don’t believe that Juliana’s family would ever have turned down a gift like this, if they were well informed of the benefits. Her father is an environmentally and health conscious man, so I hardly can imagine given a better alternative, they would necessarily stick with traditional cooking method!

 

Joshua is currently speaking to the local municipal government and NGOs to find the most deserving recipient for the stove. This also gives him the opportunity to visit the beneficiary often to monitor its performance through feedback to enable improvements to his designs, thus make the enterprise successful.