Thanks to training from CREATE! field technicians, our improved cookstoves continue to spread across Senegal. In February, a delegation from the community of Djilor traveled to Fass Koffe to learn how to build improved cookstoves. The participants will bring their new knowledge back to their village and teach their neighbors how to build their own improved cookstoves.
Women learn how to build their own cookstoves out of clay, sand, grass, and water.
CREATE!’s improved cookstove model continues to thrive because the stoves transform the lives of those who use them. Women learn to build, maintain, and repair their own cookstoves. In addition to requiring almost 75 percent less firewood than open cook fires, improved cookstoves are also safer and help women economize both time and money.
The cookstoves are easy to construct and can be built in just one afternoon.
Women quickly notice the economic and time-saving impacts of their improved cookstoves. Awa Sewale of Darou Diadji notes, “each woman in our community has an improved cookstove in her kitchen and we no longer need to walk many miles to collect firewood for cooking.” Fatou Mboup of Fass Kane also saves money thanks to her improved cookstove. “I used to buy expensive firewood for cooking. Now, I can collect just a few sticks of wood outside my home for cooking,” she says.
Women learn how to build cookstoves to fit each of their cooking pots.
Improved cookstoves are safer than open cook fires because they reduce smoke and the risk of fire. Maguette Ndiaye of Walo says, “Since I started cooking with an improved cookstove I noticed that my children are healthier because the cookstove does not produce smoke that can cause respiratory diseases.”