In 2023, Rotarians Jeff Cadge and Mark Johnson from the Briarcliff Manor club asked if we would support this worldwide project. The issue: there are 2.6 billion people on earth using dangerous open burn indoor stoves; this project provides poor families in third-world countries a safe indoor stove. Using local resources, we build clean burning stoves inexpensively; an entire village can be outfitted for $1000 (for a hundred stoves!).
The areas of focus for the Cookstove Project are fighting disease, saving mothers and children, and saving the environment. Of the estimated 2.6 billion families that cook with an open fire inside the home, 3.8 million people die each year due to heart disease and pneumonia because of the smoke. Children are burned by the open fire.
A lot of greenhouse gases are released to the atmosphere; 300 million tons of wood are consumed; 2.5 million acres of forests are cut down. All of this devastation, due to smoke in the homes - the equivalent of 40 cigarettes per day - could be avoided by a rudimentary cookstove, similar to the Franklin Stove invented by Benjamin Franklin 250 years ago.
The Cookstove Project, teaching folks in Uganda and Nepal to make their own environmentally friendly stoves, has caught on and is gaining acceptance by the local population. A donation of $10 will enable a family to build and install a two-burner cookstove that's not only efficient in its use of fuel (wood or dung), but also vents the smoke to the outside of the house. With a chimney! Now THAT's a terrific idea.