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Promoting solar cooking

From Solar Cooking

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Contents

[edit] Introduction

Each group of items costs 30 Kenya Shillings as does the pile of charcoal shown. By adopting solar cooker and the Integrated Cooking Method, poor families can buy food instead of fuel.
Groups involved in promoting solar cooking need to share more information, collaborate more and pool their voices to be heard by opinion-makers and decision-makers who could provide more resources to support the spread of solar cooking. Fostering these objectives is part of Solar Cookers International's mission. NGOs involved in other development work should consider whether solar cooking and the Integrated Cooking Method would make useful additions to their projects. Governments that currently inhibit the spread of solar cooking by heavily taxing imports of solar-related supplies while also subsidizing fossil fuel imports need to re-evaluate their thinking. Forward thinking businesses have a role to play by investing in the not-quite-yet-emerging solar cooker market, creating more manufacturing, distribution and sales facilities, and participating in spreading awareness. Schools can become involved in teaching solar cooking--both as a tool for teaching science concepts and as a practical matter of survival and home economics.

To a degree, these things are happening. Malawi has a renewable energy component in its school curriculum. Senegal has appointed a person to spearhead solar cooking work in the country. At least one government agency in The Gambia is charged with teaching solar cooking. There are other examples of small, seriously underfunded steps being made. Much more will have to be done. Many believe that there will be a tipping point where a critical mass of awareness in the right circles will greatly speed up the spread of solar cooking.

The conditions to bring about this tipping point seem to be forming currently. Food and fuel prices have doubled recently in many poor countries. Also some countries have recently reduced or removed their subsidies on cooking fuel. For example, in April 2008 the Indonesian government announced a reduction of fuel subsidies. As a result, the cost of kerosene, used for cooking, rose from 700 rupiah per liter to 2,000 rupiah, an increase of 186%.[1].

It is also important to understand that often solar cooking is best introduced as part of an Integrated Cooking Method where solar cooking is combined with heat-retention cooking (where food is heated to boiling for a short time at which point the cooking pot before being placed in an insulated box or basket to continue cooking) and simple fuel-efficient wood stoves. Soaking beans or even slightly sprouting whole grains and pulses/legumes[2], in addition to enhancing digestibility and nutritional values, will shorten cooking times, resulting in more efficient use of sun and fuel.

Dr. Dieter Seifert has pointed out that in most parts of the world, to cook a pot of beans, people put the dry beans and the cooking water into a pot and cook it over a wood fire for four hours. If people learn that they can soak the beans overnight first, they can save two hours worth of fuelwood. They save an additional one and a half hours of fuelwood if they learn to heat the soaked beans over a fire or in a solar cooker until the beans have boiled for 10-15 minutes. They can then put the pot into an insulated basket where it will continue to cook for 3-4 hours without using any fuel. The heat-retention cooker can be as simple as a basket filled with dry grass or hay. We should all consider the value of such simple changes before one launching into anything more complicated.

On the personal and local level, if you enjoy and benefit from using the sun to cook, talk to people about it. Talk to friends, family, teachers, students, store clerks, people you might sit next to on a bus or stand next to in a line at a store. If you carry copies of a small Universal Leaflet, you will have something to give to anyone who shows an interest, to direct them to further information.

Below are a number of resources that are helpful when setting up a solar cooking (or integrated cooking) project.

[edit] Hard-won lessons

How solar cooking can integrate into village life

Longtime Solar Cookers International information exchange specialist Ramon Coyle advises that it is best to focus on small goals and accomplish them with great intensity. It is better to drive one nail all the way into the wood than to only scratch the surface with ten nails. It is better to plant one tree and nurture it to full growth than to plant a hundred trees that wither away quickly in the dry season. Applied to solar cooker promotion, these comparisons suggest a few other ideas:

  • It is better to take the time to teach one woman to become an expert solar cooker user who makes great solar cooked food, than to demonstrate solar cooking to 10 government officials who will nod their heads in agreement but never do anything with the idea.
  • It is better to show one skilled handyman or handywoman or carpenter how to make usable solar cookers, than to demonstrate the concept to 300 people who won't be able to make use of the concept because they have no solar cookers and no one to teach them how to use one.
  • It is better to make sure that one new solar cook learns all that is needed to make good use of a solar cooker and to gain practice and confidence in using it, than to give brief lessons to ten solar cooks who might later give up on solar cooking at the first obstacle or setback.

Margaret Owino of the Solar Cookers International East Africa Office in Nairobi, Kenya recommends:

  • You may need to be a little cautious as it looks so urgent - yet people's initial magical enthusiasm dies off and they go back to their old ways - so initiating solar cooking projects require a long term commitment and funds, to undertake training and follow - up so that the practice and skill is instilled in the beneficiaries.
  • You may also need to familiarize yourself with some basic knowledge of the people and their felt needs - they may not be placing a new cooking technology as their first choice given a chance to prioritize.
  • The peoples diets and cooking times may need to be considered - solar cooking is slow and may not always suit some cultures.
  • It costs approximately $40 to put a solar cooker in the hands of a family - this may guide you in your funding quest.
  • Finally, I feel what you feel that there is need to assist these communities, so do not feel discouraged with the issues above - the greater the challenge the more exciting the success!

See also The Special Challenges of Solar Cooking.

[edit] Advocacy and Publicity

[edit] Solar Cooker Dissemination and Cultural Variables

[edit] Academic Resources

[edit] Project Resources

[edit] Business Resources

[edit] See also

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